Said an old man, “When I was ten years old I knew part of a lane that led from our farm. It ran a long way, and then it seemed to end in a rock wall. I thought that it ended there. When I made up stories to myself about it, I always said ‘the end’! One day I hid from my mother and went fearfully up that long way just to see the end. And when I got there the lane bent around the rock wall, and there was a road, a wider road.... It astonished me and pleased me....”
Jean Merlin spoke. “There is a network of roads—and one passing out of the net....”
Said a woman: “Shall we have Freedom here—here on earth? O my country! O my world!”
Espérance turned to her, took her hand. “Oh, widened the country, and transformed the world! And here a haven of rest and here again long adventure. But ever a richer rest and ever a higher adventure! And ever more worth while—ever a stronger and sweeter taste. Ever more real, and ever better choice of what shall be real—”
They heard the tumbrils, the wagons of death. These stopped, the barred gate of the courtyard opened. The sky was coral red behind the tree. A still dawn, and the leaves falling gently from the boughs....
The streets and houses of the city, the moving people, indifferent now, so often had they seen them, to these wagons, the sky above the city.... Jean and Espérance sat side by side. “When this day, too, shall be one of many past days—and we strike the note again and recall it, and say, ‘Even then the bitter bore the sweet....’”
“Together.... The widening ring of the together. Fused—the this and that, the we and they fused.... Then is born the immortal being of all the memories! Then begins the deep adventure of that That!”
“Are you woman—am I man? We are one!”
“Are these who go with us others? Are these others in the streets, and these in the square to which we come?—O action within and upon One’s self! O moulding hand moulding One’s self! And then, far beyond and overhead, again the huge, the sweet adventure!... Out of One’s self to make again the Child, to make again the Comrade—”
All around shone the bright morning—