"Have just completed arrangements for transportation of my effects to the mountains. Close study of various phenomena convinces me that I may have been in error, and that the cataclysm is much closer at hand than I have thought. Within a few months I shall burn this book, and confess that I should be written down an ass, or turn to it to prove myself a prophet. From the eyrie I have chosen I expect to be able to write the story of the coming deluge. It will be of great value to posterity to have a calm, scientific account, quite free from any tinge of superstition or religion. I have to-day written my Boston skeptics, forwarding copies of my calculations, with references to former inundations, and reasons for believing the Rocky Mountain region the safest at this time. All geologists agree that—"
Here the journal terminated abruptly.
Robin hardly seemed to comprehend its full significance; or possibly she was not surprised. She touched the book as gently as if it were the napkin over the face of the dead.
"It is not to the wise that God has revealed himself," she said softly. "Where is the hand that wrote this? You must finish it, Adam. Here are the blank pages waiting for such a chapter as was never written on earth."
But Adam only looked at the half-written page unseeingly. "It is all true, then," he muttered to himself; "it is all true." He walked away with a painful precision of motion, almost as if he were drunk; he neither heard nor saw anything, yet was conscious of everything, and while he thought he had been hopeless before, he knew now that he had never given up hope, never until that moment ceased to expect a rescue.
Robin took her violin and went indoors. Presently he heard its liquid notes stealing out to him, like a power unknown and divine, brushing its fingers across his heart, the harp of a thousand strings. She played for a long time, and when she ceased, in some strange way he felt that he was comforted.
VII
The World is too much with us; late and soon
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.
Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,—
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Wordsworth.
They had been sitting by the fire in silence for a long time. Robin had been sewing, but the blaze had sunk too low to see by it, and her hands were folded idly upon her mending. She put it by, and went to the window. It was a very dark night, and the stars shone brilliantly. The stars had come to mean a great deal to them both, howbeit neither had ever said so. The stars only were unchanged. "The thoughts of God in the heavens" were the same, whatever might be His thought on earth.
She sighed so heavily, that Adam asked quickly, "What is it?" and she answered, with a nervous laugh, "I was thinking of the old legend, that the souls on other planets call ours 'the sorrowful world.' What made it so sorrowful, Adam?"