Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-11-05


like pillar of cloud, swathed in white mists,
from the sky to the gray boulder upon
which he stood, and from the palm of his
hand he was dropping the moments like
white crystallized tears down into the
valley. And she knew that he of whom
she had been negligent in childhood, whom
she had execrated in youth, whom she
had forgotten in age, was the true spirit of
healing; and that by his passage the separ
ating and disintegrating desires had melted
into nothingness, and she had become at
one with infinity and the loneliness of the
world.
She smiled, and her spirit was no more
contained in the lean brown husk of her
body that now rested against the postern of
the door of the brown cottage than it was
contained in the gold and cinnamon clouds
that fastened after the sun, dropping down
the slope of the tinted horizon. She herself
was lean and brown and somewhat bent;
but in her heart there was still the wonder
ing child surveying the world, and, although
at times certain stupor of routine had
touched her days and made them glide
more swiftly, it was only for space, and
the golden moments would then break the
calm again. Will-o' -wisps in the summer
night, crescent moon bathed in the glow of
sunset, the poppy fields in the fading day
light, the change of the stars with the seasons,
and the growing peace of her fathers face
as he smiled at her through the dusk
and across the lamplght had been
real.
Her eyes wandered back to the clump of
lilacs by the door, and of sudden she saw
direct ray sent forth from the pyramidal
blossoms themselves to their diffused spirit
in the sky, and the color spread over the
low downs of the horizon, and it was then
that she saw in a flash that in reality there
are no beginnings and no endings and no
broken fragments. The Whole knows no
boundaries; but spreads away even into the
black interstellar spaces.
AS the sun was setting, she dropped upon
the steps of her doorway, and leaned back
her head against the post. The ocean of
reality stretched over all, lover the vast
reaches of atmosphere, through the scent
and the color of the field flowers and the re-
Hedging of the hard brown earth.
lTHEN, Unexpectedly, she saw her lover
step blithely down from the boulder
upon which Time had stood, and come
toward her. He was silent and smiling.
She saw a white cloud that wrapped him
round as he moved, and as he drew nearer
she saw it was wrought of white, shining
peoples, and all the peoples were bobblng
their heads and saying yes to her thoughts.
| Wnen ne stepped away lToIH tHe CIouu IL
rose and passed away over the purple tops
of the pines, and the frail petals bent over
the edges of the woods, and nodded and
smiled acquiescence at her until they tainted
and failed utterly and became part of the
sky.
Her lover stood still, large and white and
shadowy, and in each hand he held globe
of glass in which strange lights were shifting,
and as she watched the very days of her
world stood there again, and her dreams and
her visions and the colors of the hours.
There were the farmyard and the cattle and
the pigs and the geese, the lilacs and the
oaks and the brown river; there were the
village with its white church spire and the
factory chimneys, and then came people
hurrying hither and yon; there were long
city streets and rows upon rows of shops;
there was a greater river than her own, large
and blue and dotted with sails, and beyond
it the vast sea. She saw a green meadow
and three tall, bending elrns in the middle
that threw long shadows under them; she
saw snowcapped peaks of mountains and
white castles set in clumps of purple pines.
Between the up1ands she saw the amethys-
tine valleys, nesting to the sides Of the hills,
and near white cities there were lovely gar
dens of flowers and terraced grounds, and
along white walls some stately peacockS