In this house I perform all as seriously as may be required. I accept my desk, my little tools, lamp, paper. I write in the one language which I have been taught and about the few things with which I am familiar. I eat the little round of food which it is said will nourish my body. About my books I am docile and I learn from them. I look no farther than my window permits. When I wish to emerge I go obediently to the door as if there were conceivable no other way of exit. At night I fall into sleep as if that were eternal purpose. I suffer from absence, I submit to distance, I am subject to innumerable influences, I am open to them all with a sober face. But all the time I have knowledge that I am something other; That all these things shall ultimately have no more power over me. That I consent to them because of some delicate exigency in this moment of eternity. Even now I am often free of them. There was the day when I moved among the hills and lost every sense of difference from them. With the crowning cloud and the far filament of the river I found myself in common. The air was vocal with all that is identical and in that hour it offered to me my identity. I became everything. I had no question to ask for it was I, too, who was answering. The hour dissolved. The ultimate star was my neighbour. ... Suddenly I remembered myself down in the valley moving about in a house. And I perceived that for years I have been enchanted. I am listening to be set free. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret Way, by Zona Gale