"It was after nine o'clock when I got the books set right--I loved to handle them, and there was some I always looked in before I put them up because some of the pictures give me feelings I remembered, same as tasting some things will--spearmint and caraway and coriander. Insley, of course, walked down with me. Alex wanted to send us in the automobile, but I'm kind of afraid of them in the dark. I can't get it out of my head that every bump we go over may be bones. And then I guess we both sort of wanted the walk. "Insley was like another man from the one that had come into the library that afternoon, or had been talking to us at Mis' Emmons's the night before. Down in the village, on Mis' Emmons's hearth, with Robin sitting opposite, it had seemed so easy to know ways to do, and to do them. Everything seemed possible, as if the whole stiff-muscled universe could be done things to if only everybody would once say to it: _Our_ universe. But now, after his time with Alex, I knew how everything had kind of _tightened_, closed in around him, shot up into high walls. Money, tanneries, big deals by cable, moonstones from Java, they almost made me slimpse too, and think, What's the use of believing Alex Proudfit and me belong to the same universe? So I guessed how Insley was feeling, ready to believe that he had got showed up to himself in his true light, as a young, emotioning creature who dreams of getting everybody to belong together, and yet can't find no good way. And Alex Proudfit's parting words must of followed him down the drive and out on to the Plank Road:-- "'Take my advice. Don't spend yourself on this blessed little hole. It's dear to me, but it _is_ a hole ... eh? You won't get any thanks for it. Ten to one they'll turn on you if you try to be one of them. Get out of here as soon as possible, and be in the real world! This is just make-believing--and really, you know, you're too fine a sort to throw yourself away like this. Old Nature will take care of the town in good time without you. Trust her!' "Sometimes something happens to make the world seem different from what we thought it was. Them times catch all of us--when we feel like we'd been let down gentle from some high foot-path where we'd been going along, and instead had been set to walk a hard road in a silence that pointed its finger at us. If we get really knocked down sudden from a high foot-path, we can most generally pick ourselves up and rally. But when we've been let down gentle by arguments that seem convincing, and by folks that seem to know the world better than we do, then's the time when there ain't much of any rally to us. If we're any good, I s'pose we can climb back without rallying. Rallying gives some spring to the climb, but just straight dog-climbing will get us there, too.