esert--'Passion!' I have dreamed he might learn
to say 'Friendship' in that land."

And Reason said, "Put him down!"

And she said, "I will carry him so--with one arm, and with the other I
will fight the water."

He said, "Lay him down on the ground. When you are in the water you will
forget to fight, you will think only of him. Lay him down." He said,
"He will not die. When he finds you have left him alone he will open his
wings and fly. He will be in the Land of Freedom before you. Those who
reach the Land of Freedom, the first hand they see stretching down the
bank to help them shall be Love's. He will be a man then, not a child.
In your breast he cannot thrive; put him down that he may grow."

And she took her bosom from his mouth, and he bit her, so that the blood
ran down on to the ground. And she laid him down on the earth; and she
covered her wound. And she bent and stroked his wings. And I saw the
hair on her forehead turned white as snow, and she had changed from
youth to age.

And she stood far off on the bank of the river. And she said, "For what
do I go to this far land which no one has ever reached? Oh, I am alone!
I am utterly alone!"

And Reason, that old man, said to her, "Silence! What do you hear?"

And she listened intently, and she said, "I hear a sound of feet, a
thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and they beat
this way!"

He said, "They are the feet of those that shall follow you. Lead on!
make a track to the water's edge! Where you stand now, the ground will
be beaten flat by ten thousand times ten thousand feet." And he said,
"Have you seen the locusts how they cross a stream? First one comes down
to the water-edge, and it is swept away, and then another comes and
then another, and then another, and at last with their bodies piled up a
bridge is built and the rest pass over."

She said, "And, of those that come first, some are swept away, and are
heard of no more; their bodies do not even build the bridge?"

"And are swept away, and are heard of no more--and what of that?" he
said.

"And what of that--" she said.

"They make a track to the water's edge."

"They make a track to the water's edge--." And she said, "Over that
bridge which shall be built with our bodies, who will pass?"

He said, "The entire human race."

And the woman grasped her staff.

And I saw her turn down that dark path to the river.

And I awoke; and all about me was the yellow after