Hagar sat very still, her eyes closed. Her soul was searching, searching, not tumultuously, but quietly, quietly. It touched the past, here and there, and lighted it up; days and nights, dreams, ambitions, aspirations. Some dreams, some ambitions were in the way of fulfilment. Medway Ashendyne was within her; she, too, knew _Wanderlust_--"for to admire an' for to see." She had wandered and had seen. She would always love to wander, crave for to see and to admire.... To write--to earn--to write.... Her lips curved into the slightest smile. The old days and nights when she had wondered, wondered if that would ever come to pass, if it ever _could_ come to pass! It had come to pass. To do better work, and always better work--that was a continuing impulse; but it was still and steady now, not fevered.... Her mind swept with wider wings. To know, to learn, to gain in content and in fineness, to gather being, knowledge, wisdom, bliss--to gather, and then from her granary to give the increase, that was the containing, the undying desire. She had a strange passion for the future, for all that might become. She was sensitive to the wild and scattered motion within the Whole, atom colliding with atom, blind-man's-buff--all looking for the outlet into freedom, power, glory; all groping, beating the air with unclutching hands, missing the outlet, it was perhaps so small. She thought of an expression of George Meredith's, "To see the lynx that sees the light." To see it--to follow--to help find the opening.... What was needed was direction, and then unity of movement, the atoms in one stream, resistless. That, when the lightning bolt went across the sky, was what happened; corpuscles streaming freely, going side by side, not face against face, not energy dashing itself endlessly against energy. It was all one, physical and psychic; power lay in community of understanding.... Public Opinion, community of understanding, minds moving in a like direction, power resulting, power to accomplish mighty and mightier things.... Then do your best to ennoble Public Opinion. Do not think whether your best is little or great; do your best.... She opened her eyes upon the light sifting down from the rose windows. It was shortening, the shaft; evening was at hand in the church of the great dead. Many who lay there had had within them a lynx that saw the light and had tried to bring the mass of their being to follow; many had ennobled the world-mind, one this way and one that; each had brought to the vast granary his handful of wheat. Ruby and amethyst, the light lay athwart the pillars like an ethereal stair. The organist touched the organ again. A verger came down the aisle; it was closing time. Hagar rose and went out into what sunshine lay over London. CHAPTER XXIII BY THE SEA