Again, as on yesterday, she could not hold it. Increased energy, increased perception, what the ancients called the Genius, and the mystic called illumination, or voice of God, and the moderns higher vibration, superconsciousness—whatever it was, and perhaps the name did not much matter, she had touched it and then lost it. But she knew that it had been touched, and that it was desirable to know it or its like again.
She was a member of the church, a praying woman. She bent her forehead upon her hands: "O God, let thy kingdom come! As it comes near us, send thy breezes!"
Presently, rising, she went on up the stream. It was not wide; it just came into the category of river, headwater, she knew, of a greater river. October painted it with russets and golds and reds. Midcurrent showed the ineffable blue of the sky, or when clouds drove by the zenith, the clouds. She walked on until before her she saw the eastern gate of the vale. The hills closed in, leaving a bit of grassy meadow on either side the stream. This narrowed. The hills grew loftier, insensibly became mountains. She was in a mountain pass, gray cliff to the right, hemlocks overhanging the water that was broken now by bowlders, débris of an ancient rock. The path was cool and dark and washed by the scent of the conifers. Only here and there the climbing sun sent splashing through an intensity of light that showed every fallen needle, every cone or twig or leaf upon the path. Not far before her the path turned and went up over the mountain. She thought, "That will be the way to Mrs. Cliff's."
She came upon a fisherman. He sat among the roots of a hemlock, and was engaged in reeling in his line. He was a man neither old nor young, with a long, easy frame, and a short, graying beard. His dress was that of a fisherman who goes forth from the city to fish—but not for the first nor the second nor the third time. Nothing that he had on was new, but all was well cut.
"Good morning!" he said.
"Good morning!"
He worked on at his reel. "Each time that I do this I say that it is the last time."
"Why?"
"I grow too damned able—I beg your pardon!—to put myself in the fish's place."
"Have you caught any?"