Nevin’s drug was procured in New York. Hackensack failed utterly in this.... On the third day, Morning suffered keenly for the need of food. A paragraph from Betty Berry on the subject of the fasting at this time completely astonished him; indeed, shook the basic conviction as to the meaning of her departure:
“... I have often thought you did not seem so well after I returned from Europe, as you were when we parted. But the ten days will do for you, something that makes whatever might happen in the body seem so little and unavailing.... Don’t you see, you are doing what every one, destined to be a world-teacher, has done?... What amazes me continually, is that you seem to be brought, one by one, to these things by exterior processes, rather than through any will of your own.... The Hebrew prophets were all called upon to do this in order to listen better. Recall, too, the coming forth from the Wilderness of the Baptist, and the forty days in the wilderness of the Master Himself. Why, it is part of the formula! You will do more than improve the physical health; you will hear your message more clearly.... I sit and think—in the very hush of expectancy for you.”
As the evidences came, so they vanished. She could not have fled from him in the fear of leprosy and written in this way; nor could Duke Fallows, who was first of all unafraid of fleshly things. The conviction of his taint, and of its incurableness, daily weakened. Before the ten days passed, the last vestige of the horror was cleaned away. Illusion—and yet the mental battle through which he had passed, and which, through three terrible days, had shaken him body and soul, was just as real in the graving of its experience upon the fabric of his being as was the journey to Koupangtse, done hand and foot and horse. He perceived that man, farther advanced in the complications of self-consciousness, covers ground in three days and masters a lesson that would require a life to learn in the dimness and leisure of simple consciousness.
There was no way of missing this added fact: He, John Morning, was not designed to lean. He had been whipped and spurred through another dark hollow in the valley of the shadow, to show him again, and finally, that he was not intended for leaning upon others, yet must have an instant appreciation of the suffering of others. He had been forced to fight his own way to a certain poise, through what was to him, at the time, actual abandonment in distress, by the woman and the friend he loved. Moreover, he had accepted death; resignation to death in its most horrible form had been driven into his soul—an important life lesson, which whole races of men have died to learn.
He was seeing very clearly.... He bathed continually both in water and sunlight, lying in the open doorway as the Spring took root on his hill and below. Often he mused away the hours, with Betty Berry’s letters in his hand—too weak almost to stir at last, but filled with ease and well-being, such as he had never known. Water from the Spring was all he needed, and the activity of mind was pure and unerring, as if he were lifted above the enveloping mists of the senses, through which he had formerly regarded life.
Everything now was large and clear. Life was like a coast of splendid altitude, from which he viewed the mighty distances of gilded and cloud-shadowed sea, birds sailing vast-pinioned and pure, the breakers sounding a part of the majestic harmony of granite and sea and sky; the sun God-like, and the stars vast and pure like the birds.
When he actually looked with his eyes, it was as if he had come back, a man, to some haunt of childhood. The little hill was just as lovely, a human delight in the unbudded elms, a soft and childish familiarity in the new greens of the sun-slope grass. The yellow primrose was first to come, for yellow answers the thinnest, farthest sunlight. The little cabin was like a cocoon. He was but half-out. Soon the stronger sunlight would set him free—then to the wings.... One afternoon he stared across to the haze of the great city. His eyes smarted with the thought of the Charleys and the sisters, of the Boabdils and the slums.... Then, at last, he thought of Betty Berry waiting and thinking of him ... “in the very hush of expectancy.” The world was very dear and wonderful, and his love for her was in it all.
It was the ninth day that the bandage slipped from him, as clean as when he put it on the day before, and when he opened the door of the cabin he heard the first robin.... There was a sweeping finality in the way it had come from Nevin, and the quality of the man lived in Morning’s appreciation. His friends were always gone before he knew how fine they were.
He was slow to realize that the days of earth-life were plentiful for him, in the usual course. A man is never the same after he has accepted death.... And it had all come in order.... He could look into her eyes and say, “Betty Berry, whatever you want, is right for me, but I think it would be best for you to tell me everything. We are strong—and if we are not to be one together, we should talk it over and understand perfectly.”...