She had a definite sense of expectancy. She was going back to something, to somebody—and found herself hurrying almost joyfully. But with her hand on the gate, she stopped, and stared at the house as if it were strange to her. An icy little stream flowed suddenly round her heart. For a second, all the world—the moon, the village, the house, and her own inner secret universe—staggered and reeled and shook. But as suddenly, everything grew calm and still again. The frightful chill melted from her blood; the moon watched her with the same high virgin regard, and the yellow windows beckoned her home.
She went slowly up the path and into the warm silent hall.
In that moment at the gate, she had realized that it was only Herself to whom she was going back. Herself, who made those windows bright, who piled the logs on the hearth that now she could light and sit by, dreaming. It was Herself, would be running down the stairs to greet her, and fetching an apple from the pantry, and listening to her story of the evening's doings.
It seemed to her almost as if she had become two individuals. One of her went out into the village and the world. The other stayed always in the little white house. She would always be waiting to greet her home.
That was all. Now that she understood it, it did not concern her any more.
She was becoming a good hermit, she commented; but noticed, with the detachment that had grown upon her, that she was not going to remember that shuddering moment at the gate. She blew the fire high, thinking, 'After all, there is nobody but Myself who understands me much,' and was amused at her simple egotism.
IV
But secretly she knew her most perilous enemy. It was not sadness, or selfishness, or the Voices, or the odd wilderness of a determined recluse. It was Eternity.
There was no telling when Eternity might claim her. Sometimes she awoke at dawn, and went down into the dewy garden to work among the roses and iris and pansy plants, with the birds all singing and the sun dancing like a great wise morning star. The day wore on, as she digged and transplanted and clipped and watered, till, weary a little, she went into the house and took up the endless bit of sewing, or some story or poem to finish. And all at once, in spite of the sun, the earth-smell, the brisk village-sounds beyond her garden-fence, she knew that her anchor dragged,—she had slipped her moorings in the safe harbor of Time, and was drifting off, off into Eternity.
Then she cared nothing for rose-bugs, or iris-roots, or stockings to darn, or stories to read. She thought of Love, and Sin, and Death; of nations at war and her friends' souls in joy or agony, of God Himself,—and they were all as nothing. She saw the flickering garden, she heard the song-sparrow and the clucking hen, she felt her own scrubbed and earth-stained fingers and her beating heart, but these were not necessary to her. She was terribly remote; terribly careless and still and proud; for she was in Eternity.