“No—no!”
They talked, they parted. Old Anchor and Thames side and street of the smiths. That night, lying awake, suddenly he saw her life; he passed into a calm and wide and lifted moment and saw it spread from childhood. Seeing so, it appeared his own experience,—not appeared, but was. Something like a great shutter closed upon that moment, then there opened another as wide and as deep. Space, there was space! “I have standing and moving room again!”
After a week he went once more to Old Anchor. “Morgen, I better understand your life and my life. This place harms you. Come into the smiths’ street and to the house where I am and where there is all room. We have need to be together and to learn together.”
“No—no!”
Again he went away. The next day, suddenly, while he was turning in his hands a bar of silver, his thoughts for a moment ran gold. He was back with a certain day in his stone workroom at Silver Cross and he was making a cup for Abbot Mark to give to a bishop. The great picture was in his thoughts, the Blessed among women. There were rolling fields and the villages of Palestine. Palestine? Everywhere she was, she was everywhere! That day had been two years ago. Now again to-day he saw that everywhere she was, that she was everywhere. Everywhere! In all realms, upper and lower, afar and near, great and small. Everywhere. Who had hurt her? No one and nothing. Naught!
Who had hurt him? No one.
That night he saw a great thorny field and two wanderers. Each had a great burden on his shoulders and each a staff. There seemed a path of pilgrimage. And now one came full upon it and pursued it and now the other. But they were not together, and there seemed a desolateness. Each fell away into the thorns and came again with toil. The mist closed all away. Again Richard Englefield prayed. “If it be in God that we are together—”
Night passed, day passed. Night again in the street of the smiths. A light through the window, a cry in the street, a bell that leaped into clanging. Fire! Fire!
Diccon Dawn hurrying on clothing, went with the rest. It seemed to be on the water side and to the eastward,—a great fire. When they came to the Thames they saw that it was a stretch of old buildings, a maze where the poor lived, together with seafaring folk. So joined were the houses that it might be one, or they might be ten. Old Anchor—Old Anchor!
The sky was murk and flame, any face might be read; the fire-ocean leaped in breakers, roared, licked up and sucked under. All the air was sound, all the bells were ringing, all the heart was bursting. Middle Forest! A heap of fagots by town cross.