For as Ethel, raised from private considerations, lived amid public and illustrious thoughts, those whom she attracted were attracted not to her, but to the public and illustrious thoughts which were her realest and most entirely creative self. So that the centripetal attraction toward this self was balanced by the centrifugal force which sent those who admired her out and far away from her bodily-presence to work the work of that force which sent them on its way.
As had done Paul and Reinsvelt, so did the rest, one after another. For they speedily bethought them of deeds that should be wrought at once, impelled by the new force to high enterprise.
For the centripetal power that attracted people to Ethel was like that of the sun or of mightier Arcturus, never absorbing them emotionally into her atmosphere; but on the reverse, filling them with the vigor of God, and sending them to achieve newly discerned lines of public beneficence.
Thus Ethel suddenly found herself standing alone. For everyone had fallen away from her presence, away and out to do the will-of-wisdom. And for an instant she halted, with a sense of sudden and unaccountable desertion; forgetting for the moment how many hundred times the same thing had befallen her, after one of those mystical uplifts had filled with power those who had entered with her into the moment of full vision, and who from thence had hastened gladly down among the multitude to practicalize there what the vision had but illustrated.
“’Twas but that ‘loneliness which inures to oneliness,’” she said to herself; entering then herself again into the at-one-ment with the divine purpose.
Then it came. And reeling under the sudden inflow of the might of the Eternal, as it surged through brain and nerve, she knew some great need was at hand, calling for all the power with which she was now being surcharged. Then arms trembling with the eagerness of a shuddering soul’s necessities, closed around her.
“I have waited years. Love me, Ethel. I am friendless, distrusted and forlorn. Let me tell you fully now, my story and Reginald’s. For I have a suspicion that haunts me, and I want to get square with all moral questions all round. But all stands still, while Reginald is as he is. It is time he was well.”
In external stature Ethel was a grand, large woman. And with a solemn glorifying of her power, inhaling a breath which attendant hosts supplied, seating herself, she took to her arms her courageous friend, holding her commodiously, and saying: “Your hour has come. Tell me what you will. Your work is ready for you now, and you for your work, choose what you may.”
And as great Isis might have held a woman, childlike in proportion to herself, so held she Alitza Roccoca, bathing her spirit in a love now again becoming known to mortals in this passion-wearied age.