It was five days after Anna's departure. Unless the storm held him Curtin was going on the morrow. In January his profession would take him abroad, to the nearer East. He could not tell when he would be returning. "But Sweet Rocket goes with me!" "Just. As all the East and you flow here." "What kind of a general world are we coming into, Linden? What kind of a political, social, economic world? I believe that, as to much of it, Robert and Frances are far seeing. In the large, those changes are upon us, and in the large they are for the better. They are built into the road we are going. I agree, I welcome! But I would see more completely if I could." Linden, in the cane chair by the study window, seemed to pay attention to the storm. At last he spoke. "I cannot see in detail. I think there will be a great simplification. Power out of a thousand tortuous channels mingling, running broad and deep! There are signs on every side. The old banks crumble. The great sea lifts other continents." "I see everywhere how we are seeking." "Yes. The seeker finds, the finder seeks on, seeks farther. The great ages are ever the seekers." "You would say it is a great age?" "Yes. A very great one. Who is not in some way aware of it? This friction of opinion on the top is but the wildness of the outermost leaves as the strong wind blows." "And wherever I go I shall find the seeking and the greatness?" "The world is One," said Linden. The storm continued. Sweet Rocket had early supper. Zinia and Mimy, with raincoats and a huge umbrella, went by the swaying, chanting orchard to their own fireside, to Sarah and Julia and Jim and Just So. The Danes and Curtin and Drew, Linden and Marget, sat or moved about in the old Sweet Rocket parlor. They might watch the storm from the windows, or they might sit by the fire. The great wind blew through Sweet Rocket Valley. They heard the stream rushing, and the trees had a voice, as though they had taken foot out of ground and were now a herd. The rain was driven against the panes, and the wind hurled dead leaves with the rain. Wall and roof and glass shut out the physical rain, but the psychical man cognized it far and near, rain since the world began. And the fire also, and the warm room, and they in company listening to the storm. The momentary outlines shifted. There fell a sense of having done this times and times and times, a sense of hut and cave, so often, so long, in so many lands, that there was a feel of eternity about it. Rain and the cave and the fire, and the inner man still busied with his destiny! There was something that awed in the perception that ran from one to another, that held them in a swift, shimmering band. "How old--how old! How long have we done this?"