in the present and in the understood, the appropriated past. He never thought, "How grotesque the thought that we are dead!" The thought could not even occur. For one flash, for less than an instant, the plane lifted. There started forth a high, a tremendous sense of unity--Presence. It towered, it overflowed him, he was of it--then the instant closed. As it had come like a towering wave, so it sank like a wave. But there was left the lasting thrill of it, and there was left undying aspiration. "Ah, to find it again! Ah, if it will come again!" Where had been sense of the whole, again befell fragmentariness. Loss--great loss--and yet was there falling sweetness, exquisiteness still of order! He felt again the wide world that they said was dead, and yet surely was no such thing. There happened again wide and subtle change. Out of a stillness, a silence, an isolation, exquisite and tingling, a state of clarity and poise, one spoke to him _within_, "Martin!" He answered in that space. "Yes, John.... No, grief is absurd!... Just because we're ignorant!" "You can be content. We can be content." "Yes, I see! We are all in one, who cannot be destroyed." There came no more, but the world was a rhythm, swinging, swinging. There reigned great rest and calm. Out of this, with much of it yet clinging, he sank to the square, clean, sparely furnished bedroom at Sweet Rocket, with the cock crowing, with the old clock in the lower hall striking five. Curtin lay very quiet in the big bed. Dawn was coming, but his sense was that of an afterglow. He had felt beauty and still wonder like this in high mountains, watching Alpine glow. It faded and faded, but there was left with him assurance, rest, the sense of a dawn to be, a consciousness behind this consciousness, another consciousness towering, sun-gilt, in the future. He lay very still, at rest, hardly wondering. The great things, the beautiful things, were the natural things. The wholly full and blissful would be the finally natural. Dawn came in rose and amethyst. When it was full light Curtin left his bed, dressed, and went downstairs. He thought that he would walk by the river or in the garden. The house was still, the front door open. Early though it was, he found Linden on the porch starting forth with Tam. He had found, he said, that he must see Roger Carter, who was riding to-day to Alder and would be starting presently. "Will you walk with me? But you shouldn't miss your breakfast. I've had bread and milk." "I won't go now," answered Curtin. "I'll walk up and down before the house for a while. Something happened to me last night, or I happened into something. I'd like to talk to you about it, Linden--but it won't fade before you come back. I don't indeed think it will ever fade."