"Yes," said Denny, "but—"
"Lily says she reads Vedanta. Well, it is the Yogi's Neti—neti! Almost your only possible definition as yet is, 'Not this—not this!' The country that is coming—It is not capitalism, though capitalism is among its ancestors. It is not war, though in the past it warred. It is not ecclesiasticism, though ecclesiasticism, too, was an inn on its road. It is not sex-aristocracy, though that, too, is behind it; it is not preoccupation with sex at all. It is not sectionalism, nor nationalism, nor imperialism. It is not racial arrogance. It is not arrogance at all. It is not exploitation. It is not hatred. It is not selfishness. It is not lust. It is not bigotry. It is not ignorance, or pride in ignorance.—Neti, neti!... It is beauty—and truth.... And always greater.... And it comes by knowledge, out of which grows understanding, and by courage, out of which come great actions."
She ceased to speak, and leaned back in her chair, her hand at the amethysts about her throat. Fay kept his eyes upon her. He was conscious of a resurgence of a morning of a couple of years before when he had cut from a magazine a page bearing a half-tone portrait and had pinned it above his book-shelf. HAGAR ASHENDYNE had said the legend below. The rustle of the palms outside his hut came to him, and the mist of early morning above the waters.
The clock on Hagar's mantel-shelf struck ten with a silvery stroke.
Denny started. "I've got to go—work's calling!"
"I had rather hear you say, at ten o'clock, that sleep was calling," said Hagar. "You're working too hard, Rose says so, and I say so." She looked at him with friendliness deep and tender, soft and bright. "Almost Denny's only fault is that he makes his work his god rather than his servant. At times he's perilously near offering it a human sacrifice. Why will you, Denny?"
"There's so much to do and so few are doing it," said Denny. His eyes were upon the great forest bough, but he seemed to be looking beyond it, down long, long vistas. "I don't know that I worship work. But I want every prisoner of wrong to rebel. And there's no time to waste when you have to pass the word along to so many cells. Sometimes I feel, too, like sitting down and playing, but when I do, I always begin after a little to hear the chains." He laughed. "And I like you and Rose preaching dolce far niente! If ever there were two who had the power of work—!"
"All the same," said Hagar, "go to bed before two o'clock, won't you?"
He shook hands around and was gone. "What a wonderful face!" said Lily; and Fay nodded. "A kind of worn, warrior angel—"
Hagar took Lily's hand and kissed it. "You've defined Denny to a nicety! 'A kind of worn, warrior angel'—I like that!... No, don't go! It isn't late."