Feminist fiction; Historical fiction; Southern States -- Fiction; Women -- Southern States -- Fiction; Women authors -- Fiction
is the weaving all the time of the web of unity. The human family, and
the dying-out before love and understanding of invidious distinctions.
The world one home, and men one man, though of an infinite variety, and
women one woman, though of an infinite variety, and children one child,
and the open road before the three. And back of the three, Oneness. The
Great Pulse--out, the Many; in, the One.... So I with others speak and
write and go about and work."
When the clock struck again, Lily and John Fay said good-night. Lily
was to come once more before her boat sailed.
Hagar looked at Fay. "You are going to England, too?"
He hesitated. "I've said so--"
"He's just built a great bridge," said Lily, "and he hasn't really
taken a holiday for years. Robert and I want him just as long as he
will travel with us."
When they were gone, Hagar went to the window and looked out far and
wide upon the city settling to its rest. Here, to-night, would be deep
repose, here fevered tossing, here perhaps no sleep at all. There would
be death chambers and birth chambers--a many of each. And spiritual
death chambers and spiritual birth chambers and the trodden middle
rooms, minds that cried, "Light, more light!" and minds that said, "We
see as it is." ... And over all, the suns so far away they were but
glittering points. Hagar's gaze moved across the heavens from host to
host. "Ah, if you were hieroglyphics, and we could find the key--"
She came back to the lamplit table; Thomasine away, Mary Magazine
asleep--the place was alone with her. She had been tired, but she did
not feel so now. She sat down, put her arms above her head and her eyes
upon the forest bough, and began to think.... She thought visually
with colour and light and form, luminous images parting the mist,
rising in the great "interior sphere." She sat there till the clock
struck twelve, then she rose, put out the lights, opened every window.
In the east, above the roofs, glittered Orion, with Aldebaran red and
mighty and the glimmering Pleiades. Hagar stood and gazed. She lifted
her eyes toward the zenith--Capella and Algol and the street whose dust
is stars between. Her lips moved, she raised her hand. "All hail!" she
said; then turning from the window opened the door that led into her
bedroom. It was a white and fair and simple place. As she undressed,
she was thinking of the October woods at Gilead Balm.
Three days later, at the hotel, Lily and John Fay had a short but
momentous conversation. "_Do_ you want to go, John? I don't want you to
go if you don't want to go, you know."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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