“Once more the word has been spoken: It is time.
“Listen, men, and the women of men: It is time. Know now it is time. Those that left us are coming back. Those that came are leaving again. Say welcome, and then farewell!
“Welcome! Farewell!”
The old man ended with a strong, suppressed cry, as if really calling to the gods:
“Bienvenido! Bienvenido! Adios! Adios!”
Even Juana, seated at Kate’s feet, cried out without knowing what she did:
“Bienvenido! Bienvenido! Adios! Adios! Adios-n!”
On the last adios! she trailed out to a natural human “n.”
The drum began to beat with an insistent, intensive rhythm, and the flute, or whistle, lifted its odd, far-off calling voice. It was playing again and again the peculiar melody Kate had heard at first.
Then one of the men in the circle lifted his voice, and began to sing the hymn. He sang in the fashion of the Old Red Indians, with intensity and restraint, singing inwardly, singing to his own soul, not outward to the world, nor yet even upward to God, as the Christians sing. But with a sort of suppressed, tranced intensity, singing to the inner mystery, singing not into space, but into the other dimension of man’s existence, where he finds himself in the infinite room that lies inside the axis of our wheeling space. Space, like the world, cannot but move. And like the world, there is an axis. And the axis of our worldly space, when you enter, is a vastness where even the trees come and go, and the soul is at home in its own dream, noble and unquestioned.