Beth did not shut the door…. The sound of a shut door must not be the last so strange a guest should hear. Beth was cold. She could hardly realize….
Bedient turned and saw the light streaming out upon the porch. She was not visible, but her shadow stood forth upon the boards, arms strangely uplifted. The mortal within him was outraged, because he did not turn back—into that open door.
III
EQUATORIA
Allegro Scherzo
TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
BEDIENT FOR THE PLEIAD
Bedient dreamed:
He was sitting in the dark, in a high, still place; and at last (through a rift in the far mountains), a faint ghost appeared, waveringly white. Just a shimmering mist, at first, but it steadied and brightened, until the snowy breast of old God-Mother was configured in the midst of her lowly brethren on the borders of Kashmir…. And just as he was about to enter into the great peace, his consciousness beginning to wing with cosmic sweep, the rock upon which he sat started to creak and stir, and presently he was rolled about like a haversack in a heaving palanquin.
Thus he awoke, tossed in his berth aboard the Hatteras—and a gale was on. The ship, Southward bound, was far off the cape for which she was named, asking only wide sea-room, to take the big rollers with easy grace.