e too strengthening to be afraid of.
With all you can say against it, it strikes me as a tonic in our rather
flaccid life, like iron in the blood. I've sympathy with it, too, to
some extent; I've sympathy with _him_. You know, I do belong to the
people. I'm glad we know him, and that in a way we've a right to get
near to him. It puts us in touch with our own national realities as
perhaps otherwise we shouldn't be. Oh, Thor, there's so much to work
out! Isn't it a splendid thing that we can help even to the slightest
degree in doing it!"

To this there was no response whatever. She was not sure that he
listened. Beside her the tall form strode on dumb and dark, crunching
the frozen snow with a creaking sound that roused the winged and furry
things of the wood and silenced her half-hysterical efforts to fight
against that which awaited her like a glory or a doom. Growing suddenly
aware of the uselessness of speaking, she said no more.

After an interval in which her mind seemed to stop working, that of
which she became conscious next was a world of extraordinary purity.
Nothing was ever so white as this snow or this moonlight; nothing was
ever so like the ether beyond the atmosphere as this air; nothing was
ever so golden as the stars in this purple sky, or so mystically solemn
as these pines. As they climbed upward it was like mounting into some
crystal sphere, where evil was not an element.

They came out on that spot in which all the wood-paths converged, that
treeless ridge that rose like a great white altar. It was an end which
neither had foreseen when a half-hour earlier they had prolonged their
walk; otherwise they might have shrunk from it. As it was, the
association of the past with the present startled them, startled them
into pausing long enough to become conscious, to seeing each in the eyes
of the other such things as could not pass into words, before renewing
the ascent. As they continued the way upward it was as if in fulfilment
of some symbolic ceremonial.

They had stood for some minutes silent on the summit, looking out over
the wide, white radiance at their feet, when Thor spoke. "I'm not
thinking about the things you've been talking of. I'm not primarily
interested in them any more."

"You mean--?"

"I mean the helping of others--in the way I've tried it. I see the
mistake in that."

She was faintly surprised. "Indeed?"

"Through the things that have been happening I've worked out--I may say