With his eyes so freed, Quincy looked up, his head no longer stiffly straining forward.
And then, slowly, like the colors of sunset upon the eastern sky, it came to him. A fibre here, in his soul; a dart there, of fire, and beyond, over a space of grey, a shred of light. Until at last, like the glow of the hid sun below the land, all of him was athrob and painted with it, all of him flamed and sang and quickened to it. There against the stars; there in the deep mazes where other stars lay drowned like pearls in wine; there in that hinted ecstasy of space before which the vibrant lights were hung like a fine girdle before a quivering passion.
And below sat Quincy, breathing a calm breath, knowing no cold, no fear, no strangeness—in communion....
His soul loosed within him. Without pain, it broke the bonds of body and went forth. The firm air was an illimitable path, whose boundlessness pointed one way toward that which made it as a candle’s flash, short and ephemeral. All of the world breathed and rolled underneath. All of the world and its firm atmosphere—he saw it swinging eastward, away from the night and toward the long-set sun that it must meet again at dawn. He rested above the rock and above the hill. But beyond him were the stars and the veiled voice, so that he also swung—back, back, back ... to meet the morning.
And so poised, in tremulous unison with the earth and the other stars, he rested—while below, vaguely, he was aware of his crouched body and his burning eyes....
A tuft of wind fingered his hair. It tumbled against his forehead. The soft bonds of his body clamped close upon his soul. Like a dream on waking, the stars retreated; and as they went, closed in to an infinitude of hopeless depth the subtle Hand that had drawn him forth with its own ecstasied advance.
He sat there, cold under the heavens. A fresh wind pierced him. He shivered with it. He arose. He sought out the squatting road that tumbled back into the town. And he was glad to find it; glad of the vulgar lights that blinked against the noiseless houses, glad of the rattle of the car that brought bed nearer.
Like a magnet had the Hand drawn from him that which could be at home with silence and the stars. And like the tremor of a harp, the voice came on the wind:
“I keep you until each time that you seek Me. Then, shall you come forth and receive.”