Much alone in the house, she had sent her happiness
overflowing its dumb environs--humanizing these--drawing them toward
her by a gracious responsive symbolism--extending speech over realms
which nature has not yet awakened to it or which she may have struck
into speechlessness long aeons past.
She had symbolized the clock; it was the wooden God of Hours; she had
often feigned that it might be propitiated; and opening the door of it
she would pin inside the walls little clusters of blossoms as votive
offerings: if it would only move faster and bring him home! The usual
hour of his return from college was three in the afternoon. She had
symbolized that hour; one stroke for him, one for her, one for the
children--the three in one--the trinity of the household.
She sat there on the step with the candle burning beside her.
The clock struck three! The sound went through the house: down to him,
up to the children, into her. It was like a cry of a night watch: all
is well!
It was the first sound that had reached her from any source during
this agony, and now it did not come from humanity, but from outside
humanity; from Time itself which brings us together and holds us
together as long as possible and then separates us and goes on its
way--indifferent whether we are together or apart; Time which welds
the sands into the rock and then wears the rock away to its separate
sands and sends the level tide softly over them.
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