d tints of an old master, lit up a group of
women. Here, going home to their children, were Italian mothers bred
through centuries to endurance and patience; sallow Jewesses, gaunt,
bearded Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and wrinkled brows,
broad-faced Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy Italian men and
pale, blond Germans mingled with muddy Syrians and nondescript Canadians.
And suddenly the bridge was empty, the army vanished as swiftly as it
came!

Janet turned. Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball
of fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent. The delicate lines of
the upper bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant
the cupola of the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in
the azure a cloud of pink jeweller's cotton. Even as she strove to fix
these colours in her mind they vanished, the western sky faded to
magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor of the river darkened, on either
side pale lights sparkled from the windows of the mills, while down the
deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent suds from the
washing of the wools. It was given to her to know that which an artist of
living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things....

CHAPTER VIII

The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily
are called "spiritual," though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning
of the term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire
organism. It left her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness,
brought her nearer to high discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice
out of the past called upon her to forego, a voice somehow identified
with her father! It was faint, ineffectual. In obeying it, would she not
lose all life had to give? When she came in to supper her father was
concerned about her because, instead of walking home with him she had
left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers. Her
evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his
comprehension. And how could she explain the motives that led to it? She
was sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the
something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more
rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature
timorous and less vitalized.

After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the
spirit of advent