Chapter III: Pines (5)

I thanked him, and added, "Tell me--he means a lot to you, doesn't he?"

"All a man could," said the boy. "I'm going back now."

* * * * *

Dreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep-eyed. Time had been driven to truce in his case. His face showed many battles, but when he spoke, a kind of new day dawned and you looked into the face of a boy. I remained with him three days. We talked of the new magic in the training of children. We talked of the New Age and the great song of joy and peace that would break across the world when troops turned home.

Dreve had _something_. He seemed to breathe something out of the air that other men's lungs aren't trained for. He seemed to have _within_ everything necessary for a human being, including vision and humour and a firm grasp of the world. He was at peace about God and the world; at peace also about death. Slowly it dawned upon me that this man had walked arm in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life had been forced to confess that she had nothing worse to offer, whereupon the two had become fast friends.

When a man can sit tight and lose everything he formerly wanted in the sense of world possessions; when he has winnowed the last shams out of the things called _fame_ and _convention_ and _society_; when he has lost the woman who means all the world to him, and still loves her memory and her soul better than the living presence of any other woman; when he has come to realise that death contains everything he wants, yet is content to wait for it--the idea of hell becomes a boyish thing to be put away, and Lucifer returns to his old place as a Son of the Morning.

We stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did not even wear a hat.

"I came here in great shadow and could not bear the light," he said. "But one day I found my heart lifting a little as the sun came out. Then I found that it was really true--that sunlight helped me. The more I thought about it, the more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more its particular excellence for me unfolded. Take anything to the light, and it ceases to be formidable. Sickness is a confession. The time is at hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a confession of ignorance which is a lack of light. If one is weak he cannot stand the light. Transplanted things must be protected from the light. St. Paul on the road to Damascus did not have enough inner light to endure the great flash from without. Light works upon evil like quicklime--that's why sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is also hostile to the utterly stupid idea of what clothing is for--clothing that thwarts and strangles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's nothing the matter with sunlight----"

The sun had not only redeemed the physical shadows of Dreve's life, but symbolised the spiritual light which had come to him with the calm and power of the greater noon-day. He did not speak in exact statements of the one who was gone, but that romance, too, was like light about his head. I thought of the wonderful thing that Beatrice said which helped to heal the forlorn heart of her great lover:

"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen of that Rome whereof Christ is a Roman----"

And I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning over the barrier of heaven with sweet and immortal messages for him who waited below in the very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great lovewomen bridge the Unseen for their lovers, who in their turn give to the world the mighty documents of the human heart. In passing, this woman had become everything to Dreve, so that I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone but twice-powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He brought to her spirit now the greatest gift that man can bring to his mate--the love of the world through her heart.

We had walked down to the ocean. Many young people were bathing in the surf or playing on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve perhaps, but I confess that human beings never before looked so wonderful to me--a fearlessness and candour and beauty about the moving groups that was like a vision of the future. All smallness of self was smoothed away in the grand harmony of sun and sand and sea.

"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, isn't it?" he asked quietly. "Aren't they splendid together--the big boys and girls of California?... Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. I'm not lost in dreams. I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great ones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the road, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the world--playing.

"Great ones play," he repeated. "First we are labourers, then artisans, then artists, then workers--at last we learn to play. That means that we dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value to others--when we dare to become as little children.... Hear them laugh.... You wouldn't think this was the saddest little planet in the universe.... Look at that tall young pair of sunburnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting again. Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is just dawning upon him that the man who walks with this girl must walk to God.

"... Oh, yes, I know," he added laughingly, "there is flippancy and a touch of the uncouth here and there--but we have all played clumsily at first."

I continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable health. His stride up the mountain-side was actually buoyant.

"Did you ever feel that you could live as long as you pleased?" he asked.

"No."

"I think one does not learn this until after one has wanted to die. One must live above the body and not in it--in order to make it serve indefinitely--quite the same as you would climb above a street to watch a parade go by."

I put that thought away for contemplation, knowing that it belonged to a certain mystery of Dreve's regeneration.

"You know," he added, "one has to get very tired to want to die. Those young people down on the shore--they want to live. They are not tired. They want to cross all the rivers. They mean to miss nothing down here. They can't see through it all. It challenges them. But the time comes when everything on earth seems to betray. Then you have to turn to the Unseen for the big gamble. The world is learning it rapidly to-day. Look----"

We had reached his hill-cabin.

He turned from the sea to the valley. Night was falling. There was a big moss-rose plant that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all the slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was a constancy about it, and the great sun-shot hill was blessed with the light and creativeness of the long day. It was like the song of finished labour from a peasant's heart.... One forgot the world, the war, forgot that the holy heart of humanity was in intolerable travail.... The valley that Dreve now pointed to was like an English pastorale. It had the look of age and long sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was quick to catch the thought in my mind.

"... It is like England," he said. "There was a development of detail in English country-life as nowhere else. I think of cherries and cattle, of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs and sheep-tended downs and lawns, of authoritative cookery, natural service and Elizabethan inns.... Everything was regular and comfortable. One forgot to-morrow and yesterday in England before the war. I heard a dog-trainer, speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, but his breeding isn't exactly reglar.' ... With a rush it came to me that nothing in the world is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale any more--everything changed, demoralised--but only for the present."

The dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. Our eyes were lost in the California valley which seemed to be growing deeper in the thickness of night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to hear vesper bells from some Kentish village. His low voice finished the picture:

"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, vine-finished stone-work, doves in the towers and under the eaves, evening bells and honest goods.... I think of the ships going forth from England, boys from the inland countries answering the call of the sea and finding their fore-and-afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol.... You know it is the things that make the romance of a country that endure? All these will come again. All the good and perfect things of the spirit of old England will come again.... Our hearts burn within to think of the yearning in the world for a peaceful valley like this.... Think, if I could take your hand now and watch the sun go down upon a peaceful world ... hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the perfumed mist of evening ... doves under the eaves and the sleepy voices of children.... I think Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and then lose its madness for strife--if the big picture of our valley at evening were placed before the battle-lines as we see it now."

Dreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I saw a bone-white line under the tan, running from chin to jaw.

"A woman was leaving her lover," he added. "It had to be so. Each knew that. Just as she was going, the woman said, 'I forget--I forget why I have to go away.' ... It would be that way with the soldiers, if they could look down upon their own valleys and farms. They would forget war and hurry down, saying, 'I'm coming!'"

* * * * *

I wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of peace and power. I wanted to tell it. Apparently Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to pay for these big things, but many are willing to pay the price if the way is clear. Dreve had suffered all he could; then something had turned within him, and he found himself in Day again instead of Death.

"It must be told differently," he began. "For instance, if I should tell you that the way is to love your neighbour as yourself, you wouldn't have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the efflux of soul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't help me until I had experience. Happiness is the loss of the sense of self. You can see that clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. We loosen something inside that sets us free for a moment, and we say we've had a good time.

"There are great powers within. The greater the man, the more he uses this fact. We thought of steam as a finished power until the big straight-line force of electricity was released. We can't explain it, but we have touched certain of the laws which it obeys. The materialist is inclined, as ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be uncorked on the planet, just as he said that the kerosene lamp was the last word in illumination. The occultist declares that there are still higher and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and indulging in the laughter of curves and decoration where the cold monster electricity moves only in straight lines.

"Men have died to tell the story that happiness is radiation, not reflection--that we have it all inside, if we could only turn it loose--that all pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disappear the instant we enter the larger dimension of life, exactly as the moon goes out of sight in the presence of the incandescent sun.

"I was emptied of all that life meant in the world--but something new flooded in. I saw that all was not lost, but that all was greater than I could dream; that all was waiting for fuller and finer expression. I saw that what I could do for you, or for any man or woman or child, brought me a living force of the love I was dying for. It became clear that I needed only to clear away the choking evil of self, in order to feel that I was a part of the tender and mighty Plan,--to touch the rhythm of the Source, from which all songs and heroisms and martyrdoms come.

"It has all been said again and again. There comes a moment usually after much pain when the human mind realises that it is invincible when working with the Plan; that it may even merge with a kind of Divine Potency yet retain itself; that it can actually perform its actions with the help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars are swung and the avatars are born.

"A cold monster indeed is this electricity compared to the odic force, the dynamo of which is the human will. But the magic of it all lies in the reverse of the whole system of use. This force destroys when used for self, but constructs when it is turned outward. Here we touch the law again that happiness is in radiation--in the loss of the sense of self--in incandescence--"

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;

You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd--you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are called by an
irresistible call to depart;

You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
remain behind you;

What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting;

You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands
toward you....

'Allons! After the Great Companions, and to belong to them!'"_

The thing had come around by India--a quotation from Walt, in a little Hindu book of love and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. I resisted. Some entity connected with the lines seemed to smile patiently. Deep within, I knew they belonged to me; that I should have to realise them, line by line, then live them; that here was a page from the envelope of my sealed orders to be opened after clearance--opened far out on the white water.

They used to strike me as hard lines until the warm laugh came up out of them.... Romance means _Not to stay_.... Bit by bit, the story unfolds that the Plan is good--that the Plan is unutterably good, that one needs only to rise into the spiritual drift to find that all are God's countries. First the big physical drift, the drift around the world, along the waterfronts, missing none until the laugh comes, until the petty things of life, in _no_ arrangements or combinations, can hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. You know them all.

One must learn the world first; one must not miss the world tricks. The men who have lived most have laughed most. But don't stay too long in the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so long as you give yourself to them. Still you must solve the maze. After that, don't stay--don't stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, other drifts. I assure you life is rich and brave, but there is nothing so healthy as a laughing discussion of death in one's own mind--the next step of the cosmic adventure ... and to travel light there--not to take our mortgages, our material ambitions, our stone houses full of effects--by no means to take our card-indexes and letter files--to travel light, to pick up the brighter shells by the way--every glimpse ahead showing higher light--a more spacious and splendid prospect.... Why carry our furs and frost-proof igloos for this adventure in the deeper tropics?... To become as little children--to be open hearted and free handed--to listen, to believe, to make pictures, to see across apparent separateness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love the light and the land, to fall into ecstatic speculations! You can't do that if you carry the plumbing of your house in mind, and stop suddenly to recall if you turned off the water in the laundry-tubs.

Weigh up your external possessions--weigh them carefully--for their amount is the exact measure of your infidelity to God....

To become as a little child--to know that the forests are filled with other than things to eat--to love the mysteries awake, to love the fairies and the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings--to be fearless and free forever!... The Little Girl writes of her love for it all as it comes:

* * * * *

... I have a half a minute to send my love and strong pull for _High Flight_. We wanted this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, but it must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, wait--that is the old song of Earth--young waiting--big waiting--holy waiting. _I love it._ I love the suffering of it. One is great according to how well one can wait. I am loving Earth terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music.

Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and I were together--touched great white things--talked and laughed and loved until long after three. Each in her way is a power wherever she touches. Each has everything within. Each is pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, openarmed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel--and in others. I dream constantly of the beauty to come. Nature's ecstasy will be bursting forth in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm so _glad_ this morning!

* * * * *

The children learn it so easily. I like to stop in this book and let them say it--the big story of the Seamless Robe, the story of Democracy. The young men say it strongly; and tenderly the young women,--the dream of the mate in their hearts becoming the dream of the Master. They all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and lives--the little boys coming in with their tales of prairie and the deeps; literally it is here out of the mouths of babes.... Dreve found it in a woman, another in science, another in music, another in the open road. Every man is his own way, his own truth and life. It waits for all.... We keep fanning day and night, many of us who work at home--the fanners of the Hive! We cool and harden the great spiritual concept into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear and harden in flaky white under the masses of the bees....

I laugh at my own intensity.... It is our one tale, told in essay and story, in different terms for cults and schools, for soldiers and clergy, in verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but here it runs best out of the mouths of babes ... helping the Big Democrat get his story through.... The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's:

THE SOUL SPEAKS.

I walked through a field. The brown soil was upturned and all the richness of man's labour was in it.... The morning sun was lifting a grey veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh and cool where it had rested. My feet were bare and sank into the soft richness. The field was wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed to sing as the sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic birds flew close and balanced themselves magically in the sparkling air.

I happened to be just ready to receive the golden loveliness that the old Mother is always eager to give, that morning. She helped me to feel the goodness of all things--the power and beauty of all, and the great, giving spirit.... Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul--that was the secret. Soul awakened and breathing, Soul waiting and eager, Soul, the holy quickener.... The heart beat peacefully, the brain hushed all unnecessary thought and listened. I lay down upon the sweet ground there--the body relaxed and forgotten.

Then, from the depths within, I heard the sound of the Soul's voice speaking these words:

"This is the appointed time. Long enough have I sat mute and silent in the darkness. We have learned the lesson. The circle of separateness is complete. We are ready to enter a new globe now, a globe much larger than the one we have known, much more wonderful. In it there are greater tests than we ever had before. But the new tests, instead of being painful, are joyous; not separateness is ahead, but union, oneness in all things.... Long have you gone your way alone, down the road of deafness and blind eyes and pain; and not the way I would have led you, though perfectly right, for it was an education. The blindness and darkness of it has taught us what _not_ to do, therefore we know the path.... Ours were not object lessons; always we have learned through opposites.... To learn the great lesson of listening, we talked much. We told others of the paths they should take long before we thought of following our own. We hated all things, to learn how to love; we took all to ourselves, to learn how to give. We did the things of death, to learn life truly.... We have suffered great pain to know the secret source of the everlasting joy. We feared, in order that we may become fearless, and know the mystery of the dark. We chose the road of separateness to feel the ecstasy of oneness and completion at last. We entered the terrible sphere of time and space to transcend both and be free. We took upon ourselves pounds of tiresome flesh, to make of it a golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and freedom. We asked for everything at first, but through our desiring and brooding, we learned the most wonderful lesson of all--wanting nothing but to give.

"All is for us. The Path gleams before our eyes--the long, sunlit path leading to the Father's house. I go home with my love by my side. By crying out in agony, and by weeping bitterly we have learned how to _laugh_. The world is needing us; we contain all things. From now on, we live as one in Wisdom, Love and Power."

* * * * *

23

THE MATING MYSTERY

I thought a great deal about Dreve's love-story in relation to the young people, in relation to the love of humanity, and in relation to the mystical growth of a man denied the mate on earth. In the first place, there must be many great love stories in the coming decades of reconstruction, if for no other reason than that great children are coming in. Such friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth can only be born through the excellent and adequate love of man and woman. In a recent novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something of the love story of the future to a young American who is greatly troubled in his romance. I quote three or four paragraphs because this expression in fiction is clearer than I could write it again. Rajananda says:

I have watched your devotion for the woman and it has been a holy
thing, my son. You love well. She has become more than earth-woman
to you. She has become the way to God. This leads to true _yoga_.
Where there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these
trials you could not have known so soon the love that will bring
you in good time to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs
sink into commonness soon--the dull and dreamless death. It is
those who are kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who learn
the greatest thing of all--to wait--who touch the upper reaches of
splendour in the love of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves
for the greater union and the higher questing which is the love of
God together.

The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the
knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy
Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his
work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of
man and woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the
night of the world. The Builders are coming in to take the places
of those who have torn down with war and every other madness
of self. These Builders must be born of men and women--the New
Race--but of men and women who have learned what great love means.

... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to
worship God. The prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone,
and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The
time was not ripe for the race of heroes, therefore the mere
children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke
of the love of God for man, and the love of man for man, and the
love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man
and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that, even
the lips of the avatars were sealed. But now the Old is destroying
itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and of
self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come,
my son, and heroes still must be born of this sacred mystery--the
love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now,
all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who
speaks to you, and who has never known the kiss of woman--all are
opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of
the love of man and woman.... For the Builders are coming, coming
to lift the earth--the Saints are coming, my son--old Rajananda
hears them singing; the Heroes are coming with light about their
heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.... And now
I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once,
before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone
square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my
country--not far from this place, my son----

* * * * *

In the big expansions of life, in moments of great happiness, or hard-driven by pain--most of us have realised that the higher we rise in human consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thousands of people now living have risen, for short periods at least, above the sense of separateness, in which they realised that the finest and most exalted love a man may have is for "the great orphan, Humanity."

The human heart is awakened through the love of one, to the more spacious expression for the world. All life is a learning how to love. The last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before man turns his love from flesh to spirit, is the grand passion of man and woman, yet man does not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity or to the Unseen. Rather, hand in hand, the eyes of the man and woman are uplifted to one star--the Apex of a Triangle perfected.... Yet one must not turn to the Unseen until he has learned the full agony and ecstasy of the seen.

"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger ones, "but learn what love means first. Do not undertake to destroy passion until you have learned its glory and madness. Rather lift passion to adoration, and use it, full-powered, upon that which unfolds forever for your worship. It is not well to kill out a personality until you get one."

* * * * *

Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir the community with opinions or actions, which have to do with their own heart stories and the world's romance. They have a way of confounding the seasoned authorities of pastorate and parish, with embarrassing questions in regard to method and magic in the making of two souls into one. These young people may not be modest according to Elizabethan ideals; in fact, the young women are apt to go half-way in the choice of the man who is to be the father of her children, but this is an essential of innate beauty and fastidiousness. More and more the higher types of the new social order are questers for that single and holy mating which brings nearer the dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for.

The story of Romance cannot be written nor interpreted in life without its hill-rock, named Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. The first business of human beings is to find their own on earth. All makeshifts part away; all short-range systems scurry past; all comets and asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of suns whip into each other's attraction. And so it is with a true-mated pair. Those who have dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise here below for a time the raptures of the elect. The new generation has a sense of this; and while its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its finer examples preserve an integrity for the one until he is found.

The New Race realises that promiscuity is only a lack of taste. To draw the fulness and redolence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any episode or fabric of life, one must search for the true, as well as the beautiful, and the beautiful as well as the good.... Perhaps that tells it best--it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. It means to bring back the beauty of the body as well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its devil and its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well that it is in danger of forgetting that the old Mother is not complete in herself, but a manifest of her Lord Sun....

* * * * *

As to the liberty of its loves--the New Race realises that one cannot be held, except by vulgar hands, where that one does not want to stay. A mated man and woman turn each other absolutely free, and the first cry of their liberty is toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught in the pure dream are content to wait for each other. They do not experiment. They realise the long road of romance--a road so long that the three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the night. They build above the flesh if for no other reason than to come into the greater beauty of the flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity only for mystical union, carried away in no abandonment, they seek to achieve that command of the body by the mind, and that command of the body and mind by the Soul, which reveals the ultimate truth--that the plan is for Joy; that the best of all things is for men who have mastered themselves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable answer to self-conquest.

The growth of Romance through an ideal mating becomes a fusion at last of all the loves of earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more reverently to be promoted than procreation, for upon it depends the loveliness of issue. The New Race acts upon the conviction that the love between man and woman is the holiest of earth expressions, rather than the love of mother and child. The first contains the second.

Still no earth love is the end.... Built through austerity and idolatry, through denial and abandon, through madness and martyrdom, through pettiness and chivalry, through pain turning less and less slowly through the years to power, through a little zone of peace at last (the calm before the greater storm) the fervour of man and woman becomes, in the fullness of time, too strong for earth, and in the final and keenest pain, the administry of a higher force begins.... I mean to tell this in a queer way through the next three or four chapters. Straight statements will not contain it quite--for it is _still_ with dream, as yet. Rather I mean to weave the concept for you--fold on fold--so that at the end you will have it, as they do who have listened in Chapel many days.

Flesh is not integrated finely enough to carry the higher ardours of devotion. If the great saints who have learned to pour out their souls in adoration to the Father should turn back to a mere physical expression, they would blast themselves as well as the object of their madness. The awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the eye of the adorer from the breast to the brow of the beloved--from the brow to the Initiatory Star risen at last to meridian.

A new dimension of love is entered upon. All life tells the story. Watch the big birds lift from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch the airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the monorail.... Machinery of racking power in a falling house, is that great love which has not yet learned to look above the body of the chosen one.

This change is the last and highest pain of romance--the breaking apart of the temporal, for the story of the long road. Man and woman must go apart for the mastery of self, before they are ready for the higher mating. The great love story invariably crosses the mountains of separation. If we cling too long to the less, nature is outraged, beauty is drained. Brief separations are dangerous, because the lovers build recklessly with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials. Meeting again too soon, they encounter an unmiraculous creature face to face. If they had really completed the journey, finished the task apart, they would have come into that tenderness which loves the human frailties of each other, and which sees the manifest of three-score-ten merely as a garment particularly made for a particular journey.

* * * * *

There is always wrecking work, before a new and wider circle is entered upon. The time will come when men and women shall learn that the magic of going apart is equal to the magic of coming together. In all birth-times, in all transitions, the consciousness of the bearer is changed--often queerly.... One can endure the primitive and the child in the other's mind; one might adore the great play of passion, and all the art of it; one might never weary of fragrance of throat, or magnetism of hand, the inimitable plays and child things--but the mind is forever the slayer of the real....

Remember, there is not a full union possible on the physical plane. The body is the barrier that separates souls. Those who believe they have all of each other in that which they see and hear and touch--have far to come in the real love story. Have you ever asked yourself what physical passion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation. This separation was necessary for the diffusion of life. It is the outbreath, the going forth, the great generative plan.... Physical passion does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often it only makes the agony more keen. In the early phenomena of all great love stories, there is encountered that blinding, bewildering need _to become the other_--to lose identity, to fly somehow into the breast of the other and be no more. This is keen pain of love but also an intimation of greater union.

* * * * *

There was a man who had found much of beauty and power, much of the Burning Desert and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the Hill Country--in his story with a certain woman. She loved him in a way more real than he dreamed. Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had been glad to make the most, merely, of an exquisite playwoman. One day she was down town to meet him, but he left her for a business appointment. That afternoon, about everything he had in a material way was swept from him--much to which his ambition had tied itself for several years. The man was badly rocked. He walked the streets--shocked almost to laughter, to find all that he had held for, and held to, plucked from under.... At length he thought of the woman who waited. The laugh of mockery quickened, because he thought of losing her, too--a worldly-heart who would go with the rest--goods that perish.

He knocked at the door where she waited. It was opened swiftly. He did not need to speak.... She seemed above and around him. There was a great still sweetness he had never dreamed of as a man (and could only remember dimly as a child to his mother), arms of tenderness and healing.... He saw that instant in her eyes that nothing of the world ever did nor ever could really separate them. The queerest thing about it all was, that he used a word he never could use before--a word, as he said, that had been so badly worked by the world that it needed a lot of washing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his lips--_wife_--in a way that showed him also a new meaning to the word _forever_.

* * * * *

This subject of love and mating is only opened. There is much to say in pages that follow, but now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme, there is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain the spirit of many things I have longed to express. Those to whom they appeal will find the last pages of the book richer because of the insert.

* * * * *

24

CHAPTER OF LETTERS