Chapter XXXII

I was writing in the study. Now I sat at the desk, and now I walked to and fro. I was at work upon Aldebaran. It struck eleven. The house stood quite quiet, above and below. Some work that she was doing had taken Miriam farther north for a week. It was late. Standing at the window, I saw only quiet night, dark houses. The feet of some passer-by rang loud on the pavement. A train passed on the "L," a block away.

Work had gone to-night nor well nor badly. I had finished a scene, but knew that to-morrow I must make much of it over. I laid work by and turned toward the book-shelves....

Light seemed in my brain--light! The room, the old earth, all trains and loops and garlands and nooses of phenomena vanished. There was light in excelsis. There was no form, as old form is conceived, but there was control. There was no labor of motion, but there was thrill. There was not change as change here is conceived, but I think there was change. Only it was so vast.... The sense was of power and infinite experience, of wisdom and of floods of balm. In the midst of the balm there was fiber, activity, mind, and all in a time and space into which our time and space melted, raindrops into sea! I have said that there was no form, but there was a sense that some supreme effort of perception might reveal form, though of a magnitude and contour!--The feeling was that what yesterday had been a collectivity--diffused, planetary life--was become, in a flash that tore the heavens and rolled them away, a self-conscious, a living Spirit. The Earth became a Spirit with a vesture. And that was I--I was That. And all history and all experience and all "otherness" was but the honey in that hive! And the hive was conscious as a man is conscious.... There came another flash--core-light, core-voice.... Still, still, there were other forms, there were companion planets! ... There came a climax. I knew the great dominant whom the old congeries, in the old time, named "The Sun" ... Light, light, light!

The intensity of experience lessened. The great thing, in all its scope, paled, entered memory.

But out of lower space and out of lower time, and out of lower form, stayed the sense of goal. I knew the pilgrims and the pilgrimage, the task, the quest, the America over the waves, the Grail, the immortal adventure, eternal romance--

And Miriam, that was the spirit most near, most dear to me? Before twenty-four hours had passed there came a letter from her.

MICHAEL: Last night, about midnight, my soul sprang forward with a certain burning quality. There was great light, and in an inner firmament I saw the sun that we are.--MIRIAM.