"Is that Windless? He looks like a gentleman. Let's call the minister and let him pat us on the head, show him it's a world of kisses so he'll know what the trouble is, and tell him to ring the bell to-morrow."
"Nonsense. Besides, if you're going to do that, I'd rather only Windless saw."
"You'll be famous and glorious, won't you? And I'll be proud—"
"Proud in a tower?"
"Oh, anywhere. Properly proud like Windless. But we'll like best to be in Hagar, because that will be home."
"I'll be something, or try to be, if you want it. I'm a tired soldier now, Nellie, on sick leave. I told the adjutant I was in love, too, but he wouldn't put it in the permit. Let's go home."
They went up past the militant church, and Thaddeus and Rachel waited, smiling, at the gate under the lilacs. Simon's epitaph and the fading mountain were left facing each other across the dusk. In any issue between them, the dignity of law and time seemed to be with the mountain as against the personal claim, yet one did not come to Hagar to learn among its twilights that humanity was degenerate nature, or that the instinct of its insistent identity was lawless; it might be an amendment in the process of making.
"They're coming," said Thaddeus. "The older I grow, Mrs. Mavering, the more I perceive a certain dexterity in the—in fact, in event; a shell now, for instance, skilfully exploded."
Rachel only smiled and threw open the gate.