She stared out of the window at the long stretches of mountains and valleys, with the sky above, and knew a deep kinship with them, as well. “Freedom,” she thought. “Nothin’ can’t hold it all. Nothin’ kin hold me. I kin stretch out all acrost the mountains, an’ lay down in the sky, an’ I’m deep-rooted in the everlastin’ hills. O my Lord, O my Lord!” The breathless ejaculations flowed away into complete silence, where only the tears running from her closed eyes could express the ecstasy of adoration that held her.
She still inhabited the same small and meagre body, but the spirit that flowed through her now was free of all the world, and with it came an enormous outstretching compassion, understanding, and tenderness for all suffering.
An hour later she stepped off the train at Hart’s Run. It was a morning in late September. An intense sparkling light fell over the world, driving the mists away from the parti-colored hills, and disclosing the immense dome of the blue sky.
Gathering up her hand luggage, Julie walked lightly along the familiar platform, her footsteps answering the rhythm of the words, “I’ve come home, I’ve come home.”
The first person to see her was Edward Black. He was pushing a truckload of trunks, and when he caught sight of her he stopped dead and half sat down upon the truck handles to gaze in stupefaction.
“Julie Rose! You back?” he cried.
She met his eyes steadily, gazing forth at him from that deep centre of herself. “Yes, Ed, I’m back. I’ve come home,” she answered.
His first astonishment gave place then to a mean and taunting look. He leered as she passed and said softly, “Well, I reckon you an’ Mis’ Bixby’s husband had a high old time together.”
But she went by untouched, the insult blowing past her as lightly as a summer wind. The great experience through which she had passed had been out in the deep channel of the spirit. How could Ed Black know anything about it? How could any words of his even touch it, much less hurt her? She looked full at him as she passed, and in that instant of detached scrutiny she was conscious of a sudden stab of pity. For a moment she knew the man for what he was—a poor mean nature, destined always to inhabit the murky backwaters of life, incapable of ever striking out into the clear depths of any great emotion—a crippled bit of humanity never again to be afraid of or bullied by, only to be sorry for. “Poor Ed,” she thought, as she went down the platform and turned along the main street. The morning air touched her face refreshingly, there were drifts of great white clouds in the sky, and the mountains—the mountains that she had been born and brought up in! “I’ve come home, I’ve come home!” she whispered again.
Coming up the street a little in advance of her, she presently perceived Brother Seabrook. He was pacing along abstractedly, his head bent over his newspaper, which he had just secured from the post office and which bore tall excited headlines about the war. A little distance away, conscious that some one was approaching, he glanced up, saw her, and stopped for one paralyzed instant. His hand went mechanically toward his hat, but he checked it and, thrusting it into his breast pocket, pretended to feel for something; then he faced abruptly round and hastened in the opposite direction, as though suddenly reminded of important business elsewhere.