Dreve smiled at me with sudden revealing charm. "I would say that it was all in loving one's neighbour," he added, "except that it has been said so much.... It is true. You seemed to know it to-day on the shore. You seemed to see the great ones passing there. If the world could only know the joy of seeing the sons of God in the eyes of passing men!" * * * * * Night had come. We sat at the doorway of his cabin, a waver of firelight within, stars clearing above the misty sea. "It's all play when one gets into the Plan--all pain while one resists the Plan," Dreve added slowly. "I used to think that I had a strong will; that I had good will-force, as men go. It was the will of an invalid child. If men could only know the force that is theirs to use when they enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old habits and ways and propensities--but only because they are harmful and impeding. All which really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It returns to you with fresh loveliness and power. One does not give up three-space to understand four-space. The truth is he must rise above the former to see it all. "It isn't you and I who matter," he said abruptly, after a pause. "These things are for all. I know what comes afterward--to a man or to a nation--when driven to the last ditch of pain. A new dimension of power comes. That's what happens. That's what the New Age is all about. That's what the war means. We shall learn our new chastity. We shall emerge as a race into a more serene and splendid consciousness.... The price--the dead.... I could tell you something about that. One must have prayed for death to know about that. Don't think of that now--only take it from me, or from your own soul, that the big Plan is all right--that _They_ haven't made any mistakes yet--that the loved one is only away for a time--busy--quite right--about the Father's business. Another time for that. "I can't forget them down on the Shore," Dreve finished. "That was play. It was all a laugh down there. The big forces and the big people are always a part of laughter. The laugh will take you to the throne. The Gods laugh.... There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a laugh that challenges power. There is the laugh of the aroused lover in the world. We shall hear the laugh of the world itself, when the big revelation breaks upon us all that the Plan is good--that the Plan is for joy." 22 A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER I think we come through at birth with certain sealed orders to be opened at distant points of the journey.... Ten years ago, as I lay one night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the light--my eyes found these lines: _"Listen, I will be honest with you: I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes. These are the days that must happen to you: You shall not heap up what is called riches; You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve;