"We'll stay, then, just one other half-hour. And now," said Lily, "tell me about yourself. We see your name, of course, and what the papers think you are doing. But you yourself—"
"But I myself?" said Hagar. "Ah, if you'll tell me, I'll tell you!" The great bough of red leaves against the wall was repeated in miniature by a spray upon the table, resting in a piece of cloudy Venetian glass. Hagar took it from the vase and sat studying it, colour and line. She sat at ease in the deep chair, her long, slender limbs composed, her head thrown back against green-bronze, an arm bent and raised, the wine-red spray in her hand. "What," she said, "does a man or woman do in a dusty day's march of every great transit? About that is what I and many others have been doing, in this age as in other ages. Millions of minds to reach with a statement that for reasons of weight the column must surmount such a hill and again such a hill, the line of march lying truly on higher levels. The statement did not originate with the messengers of this or any other age; it is social, and the inner urge would send the marchers somehow on, but there is needed interpreting, clarifying, articulation—hence the office that we fill, though we fill it as yet, I know, weakly enough! So it means a preoccupation with communication—ways and means of reaching minds. And that, lacking a developed telepathy, means the spoken and the written word. And that means, seeing we have such great numbers to reach, a continuing endeavour to reach people in congregation. And that means arrangement, going from place to place, much time that you sigh for consumed, some weariness, a great number of petty happenings—and a vast insight into life and the way it is lived and the beings who live it! It means contacts with reality and a feeding the springs of humour and an acquaintance with the truly astonishing forest of human motives. And there is organization work and correspondence, and much of what might be called drudgery unless you can put the glow about it.... And there is the weaving all the time of the web of unity. The human family, and the dying-out before love and understanding of invidious distinctions. The world one home, and men one man, though of an infinite variety, and women one woman, though of an infinite variety, and children one child, and the open road before the three. And back of the three, Oneness. The Great Pulse—out, the Many; in, the One.... So I with others speak and write and go about and work."
When the clock struck again, Lily and John Fay said good-night. Lily was to come once more before her boat sailed.
Hagar looked at Fay. "You are going to England, too?"
He hesitated. "I've said so—"
"He's just built a great bridge," said Lily, "and he hasn't really taken a holiday for years. Robert and I want him just as long as he will travel with us."
When they were gone, Hagar went to the window and looked out far and wide upon the city settling to its rest. Here, to-night, would be deep repose, here fevered tossing, here perhaps no sleep at all. There would be death chambers and birth chambers—a many of each. And spiritual death chambers and spiritual birth chambers and the trodden middle rooms, minds that cried, "Light, more light!" and minds that said, "We see as it is." ... And over all, the suns so far away they were but glittering points. Hagar's gaze moved across the heavens from host to host. "Ah, if you were hieroglyphics, and we could find the key—"
She came back to the lamplit table; Thomasine away, Mary Magazine asleep—the place was alone with her. She had been tired, but she did not feel so now. She sat down, put her arms above her head and her eyes upon the forest bough, and began to think.... She thought visually with colour and light and form, luminous images parting the mist, rising in the great "interior sphere." She sat there till the clock struck twelve, then she rose, put out the lights, opened every window. In the east, above the roofs, glittered Orion, with Aldebaran red and mighty and the glimmering Pleiades. Hagar stood and gazed. She lifted her eyes toward the zenith—Capella and Algol and the street whose dust is stars between. Her lips moved, she raised her hand. "All hail!" she said; then turning from the window opened the door that led into her bedroom. It was a white and fair and simple place. As she undressed, she was thinking of the October woods at Gilead Balm.
Three days later, at the hotel, Lily and John Fay had a short but momentous conversation. "Do you want to go, John? I don't want you to go if you don't want to go, you know."
"That's what I came to talk to you about," said Fay. "I have my stateroom. The boat sails day after to-morrow. I've written to men I know in London and in Paris. I want to see them. They're men I've worked with. I want to see Robert. I even want to keep on seeing you, Lily! I've been about as eager as a boy for that run over Europe with the two of you. And I don't want to disappoint you and Robert, if it is the least disappointment. But—"