In the afternoon Anna and Curtin, Drew and the two Danes, walked down the river, in among the partly forested, partly grassy hills that here closed the valley. Indian summer had now stolen over the land. The air hung smoky amethyst, and still as still! No motion was in the fallen leaves, the birds sailed stilly by, the stubble fields dreamed, the river sang low. Wood smoke clung in the nostril. Turning, coming homeward, the brick house and yellowed pillars stood pictured. They passed through the orchard and by a small cider mill. Zinia, on the back porch, poured for each out of an amber pitcher an amber glassful. "Was-hael!" said Drew, and lifted the glass. Curtin caught from memory the answering phrase, "Drink-hael!" A shaft of wonder, like a gleam of light, touched them all with strange fingers. Something trembled in the air. If it said aught it said, "So Earth begins to live Poetry!" Drew set down the cup with a sharp, clear sound. "Life, everlasting life!" he said. "I see it now! We have always lived!"
Again evening in the old parlor, the fire and music, Tam lying beside Linden, Marget seated by Anna Darcy. Robert Dane spoke. "This finding ourselves in all and all in us, this lifting the all into a mighty I, this is it behind the slowly accelerating movements of the ages, behind all efforts for freedom, for knowledge, for interchange and intercourse, swifter and swifter, subtler and subtler intercourse—this is it?"
"Yes. Behind a hundred shapes of dawn."
"Effort does not cease?"
"No. But effort, too, is finer and far more powerful. You act now from within upon the within."
"To touch through and through that we are one! Hercules's labor isn't in it!"
"Yet it is done and to be done. Find me if you can an individual to-day who has not some dim perception of it, or who is not in some wise acting toward it! Even the most unpromising—look and you will see! It is so tremendous, that finding, it runs through every fiber. We can cut out no pattern, but we move from light to light, from love to love!"
In her room that night, when she had put out the lamp, Anna Darcy, lying in bed, watched the firelight on wall and ceiling. A cricket chirped, she could hear the river. Her visit to Sweet Rocket was ending. "Only it will never end; it is immortal within me!"
She saw how all life interlocked, how shock to one was taken up by the whole, how joy to one thrilled through all. "What we call space is Being; what we call time is our own Story, our colored, toned lastingness! Give and take, forever and forever, forever and forever! Find lovely things to give, and from the other side of us take lovely things, lovelier and lovelier! Know thyself—know thyself—know Thyself. 'If ye do it unto one, the least of these, ye do it unto Me.' 'And all we made One.'"