y seemed like common reality. The rest was
unreal. She knew that Skrebensky had never become finally real.
In the weeks of passionate ecstasy he had been with her in her
desire, she had created him for the time being. But in the end
he had failed and broken down.

Strange, what a void separated him and her. She liked him
now, as she liked a memory, some bygone self. He was something
of the past, finite. He was that which is known. She felt a
poignant affection for him, as for that which is past. But, when
she looked with her face forward, he was not. Nay, when she
looked ahead, into the undiscovered land before her, what was
there she could recognize but a fresh glow of light and
inscrutable trees going up from the earth like smoke. It was the
unknown, the unexplored, the undiscovered upon whose shore she
had landed, alone, after crossing the void, the darkness which
washed the New World and the Old.

There would be no child: she was glad. If there had been a
child, it would have made little difference, however. She would
have kept the child and herself, she would not have gone to
Skrebensky. Anton belonged to the past.

There came the cablegram from Skrebensky: "I am married." An
old pain and anger and contempt stirred in her. Did he belong so
utterly to the cast-off past? She repudiated him. He was as he
was. It was good that he was as he was. Who was she to have a
man according to her own desire? It was not for her to create,
but to recognize a man created by God. The man should come from
the Infinite and she should hail him. She was glad she could not
create her man. She was glad she had nothing to do with his
creation. She was glad that this lay within the scope of that
vaster power in which she rested at last. The man would come out
of Eternity to which she herself belonged.

As she grew better, she sat to watch a new creation. As she
sat at her window, she saw the people go by in the street below,
colliers, women, children, walking each in the husk of an old
fruition, but visible through the husk, the swelling and the
heaving contour of the new germination. In the still, silenced
forms of the colliers she saw a sort of suspense, a waiting in
pain for the new liberation; she saw the same in the false hard
confidence of the women. The confidence of the women was
brittle. It would break quickly to reveal the strength and
patient effort of the new germination.

In everything she saw she grasped and groped to