Nothing was completed beyond change. Nothing was still. From rocks to man, the force moved, making, changing, destroying, recreating, fashioning to—what? Chaos or perfection.
There was no permanent silence and peace apart from motion, from the ever-changing march of the universe on—to what? A purpose hidden from finite sense. A scale so vast that its first note was lost in the birth of time, its last in infinity.
And she, deaf to this tremendous harmony, had stood scornful of all but the small, thin note of her own personal security! The chord of the world's pain, so clear to Roger and Black Tom, she had not heard. Of the perfect scale so clear to Charlotte Welles, she had not grasped a note. The joy of life that thrust through her mother's muddled thinking was a far sweeter note than her own blind assurance of superiority. Even the sensuous longing of Merle for physical beauty was a finer understanding of the purpose of life than her own.
The moon had moved on across the world, the little meadow lay in darkness, when Anne closed the window at last and went to bed.
A week later, the first snow fell. It came in the night and Anne waked to a white world so white and still that the very stillness throbbed with its own intensity. Anne stood for hours staring out at the snow-filled hollows. Under that thick white, perhaps change was already beginning, a little opening here, a little closing here, the small first notes of the great orchestra tuning for the vast symphony.
In the night the snow fell again, thicker, whiter, heavier.
Early in the morning Anne sought Mary Potter.
"I can get through, can't I? If I go at once?"
"Yes. But there won't be many days longer. The snow's going to be heavy this year. It's going to be a wild winter. Did you hear that crash last night? It was that cedar you say looks like an old woman with a basket. It snapped clear off like——"
"If I pack to-day, can Mr. Potter get me down to Miller's? The stage will take me to Raymond."