wl, like the slightly faded 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