“There’s telepathy,” she suggested.
“Thanks for the idea! If we’ve arrived in this pleasant garden after a thousand-year journey I certainly shan’t complain!”
“It wouldn’t profit you much if you did! And besides, my feelings would be hurt!” she laughed softly. “I do so love the sound of my own voice—I wonder if that’s because I’ve been silent a thousand years!”
“I hope you weren’t, for—I admire your voice! Looking at the stars does make you think large thoughts. If they had all been flung into space by chance, as a child scatters sand, we’d have had a badly scrambled universe by this time—it must be for something—something pretty important.”
“I wonder....” She bent forward, her elbow on the arm of the chair, her hand laid against her cheek. “Let’s pretend we can see all mankind, from the beginning, following a silken cord that Some One ahead is unwinding and dropping behind as a guide. And we all try to hold fast to it—we lose it over and over again and stumble over those who have fallen in the dark places of the road—then we clutch it again. And we never quite see the leader, but we know he is there, away on ahead trying to guide us to the goal——”
“Yes,” he said eagerly, “the goal——”
“Is happiness! That’s what we’re all searching for! And our Leader has had so many names—those ahead are always crying back a name caught from those ahead of them—down through the ages. But it helps to know that many are on ahead clutching the cord, not going too fast for fear the great host behind may lose their hope and drop the cord altogether!”
“I like that; it’s bully! It’s the life line, the great clue——”
“Yes, yes,” she said, “and even the half gods are not to be sneered at; they’ve tangled up the cord and tied hard knots in it—— Oh, dear! I’m soaring again!”
There had been some question of her going away for the remainder of the summer, and he referred to this presently. He was hoping that she would go before the return of Mills and Leila. The old intimacy between the two houses would revive: it might be that Millicent was ready to marry Mills; and tonight Bruce did not doubt his own love for her—if only he might touch her hand that lay so near and tell her! In the calm night he felt again the acute loneliness that had so beset him in his year-long pilgrimage in search of peace; and he had found at the end a love that was not peace. After the verdict of the judges of the memorial plans was given it would be best for him to leave—go to New York perhaps and try his fortune there, and forget these months that had been so packed with experience.