"See the love and beauty and power and daring! See the thought and feeling pressing on--see them trooping into fuller being--see them men and women, their tribes and nations! When we have gone far, far on, see their human earth!" It was Linden, she thought, who said that. She came back with a great throb of her heart to the earth beneath a golden hickory, to the October sun, in a little Virginian valley. Yet the two reclining there seemed still in a brown study, gone away. She thought: "I am come into a strange country! Are they knowing, feeling all that life more intensely than I, for all that they lie there so quietly, thinking, one would say, of to-morrow's work, of a book they are reading, or of the cedar waxwings?... It is all in the range of perception, could I run like light all over the earth! There are those birds and their life. I only saw what _is_!" But she felt that while she had had a wave of it those two had a whole breadth of ocean. She felt that they were expert, adept. She felt again the breath of wonder. It was at once wonder and homelikeness. "Glad--glad--glad that I came! My gray road turns!" Richard Linden dropped his hands from behind his head and passed them over his eyes. Marget rose to her knees. There was deep light in her face. She lifted then let fall her arms. "Oh, the _beauty_ when life is seen as a landscape, heard as a symphony, smelled as a garden, tasted as nectar, dwelt in as a house!" She rose to her feet. "The sun is gone from the grass. It is dawn in Tibet. Come, Tam, let us be going home!" They folded the plaid and left the hickory and the dogwood. The glade was turning violet, but the hilltops showed golden and the mountains stood in light. A rich scent breathed from the earth, while the air carried a spear from the north. Leaving the wood, they took again the path by the river, that sang toward them, that held pools of light. Walking so, Marget fell to talking of Anna Darcy's life, the manner of it, her steadfast work from year to year, and all her kindnesses, and all that she had given. At first Miss Darcy tried to stop her, but then she could not try any longer, the appreciation was so sweet. Her life had been difficult, isolated for all the stir around her, subject to sorrows, a little withered and gray. She felt the exquisite caress of their interest. It was more than that to her; it was recognition. How would it be if all were truly interested in all? If there were general recognition? As she walked, the valley and the hills, the river and warm, dusky air, the collie, the man and woman with her, herself, seemed to shift and quiver into one. Walls vanished. There happened rest, understanding, imperviousness to harm, blood warmth, and new and strange aspiration.