My whole being seemed to change in the warmth of her comprehension. “I have a friend,” it sang itself in me. “I have a friend!”
“And you are a born American?” I asked. There was none of that sure, all-right look of the Americans about her.
“Yes, indeed. My mother, like so many mothers,”—and her eyebrows lifted humorously whimsical,—“claims we're descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, and that one of our lineal ancestors came over in the Mayflower.”
“For all your mother's pride in the Pilgrim Fathers, you yourself are as plain from the heart as an immigrant.”
“Weren't the Pilgrim Fathers immigrants two hundred years ago?”
She took from her desk a book and read to me.
Then she opened her arms to me, and breathlessly I felt myself drawn to her. Bonds seemed to burst. A suffusion of light filled my being. Great choirings lifted me in space. I walked out unseeingly.
All the way home the words she read flamed before me: “We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the America that we create.”
So all those lonely years of seeking and praying were not in vain. How glad I was that I had not stopped at the husk, a good job, a good living! Through my inarticulate groping and reaching out I had found the soul, the spirit of America.