They watched him along the trail until, as the figure had entered, so it vanished from the leaded window. They sat awhile longer in the gray-pearl world, and then they rose and followed the horseman down to Sweet Rocket.
XXII
Malcolm Smith and Drew had their talk, walking by the river in the still, November dusk. Drew said: "I was glad to be on Rock Mountain, and after a few months, if you will have me, I am going there again. But I am glad that I came here. I am growing to see that it is not here nor there, camp on mountain or Sweet Rocket, that a man goes to find himself. But yet there are helpers.... There's a principle of induction, don't you think, sir? Those who find start a wave of finding. The wave caught them, too. There isn't any first or last."
Turning, they saw fire gleaming through the window. "He says that we (and when he says that he means the whole of us. When he says 'I' it is the other word for 'we.' It is the Whole of the many) are growing fast to-day. Sometimes he says Evolving Life, sometimes the Principle of Integration, or the Great Synthesis. He may say Humanity Awake, or Going Home, or Realizing Deity, or Liberation in God, or Becoming Real, or Fulfilling Want, or Recollection, or Union, or the Eternal, Including SELF, or Love at Last. He seems to think that almost any phrase will answer if you know the thing."
Zinia's bell rang from the porch behind them. They went in to the pleasant supper table, set with wholesome, delicate bread, and fragrant coffee, cottage cheese, and baked apples and cream. The table talk was merry this evening, after the dreamy day. Supper over, all walked out to see the night, and found it clearing, with river banks of clouds and stars between like lit craft sailing, sailing. The air breathed exquisitely mild, warm to-night as early October. "Let us sit by the river and watch awhile." They took capes and coats and went down to where, before the cedars, was placed a long bench. Sitting here, though no entire constellation was visible, yet they pieced out the figures.
They sat in silence, watching the ships of the universe. At last said the visitor: "I have been thinking a good deal about you down here by this river, and about Drew, and of two or three things Mr. Curtin said when he was at camp. So I came down. I have been thinking a good deal. Look! there is Pleiades, a magic island in a sea. I have had my inklings of the way currents arise in this world. Let's grant that it is a universe of thought and will and feeling, and that, from ignoring as much as we could that fact, and then from wondering about it, and then from in some wise earning it, we begin to be it—"
"Just," said Linden. "Well?"