She stopped, swayed, then walked. She walked as if on knives which cut her feet, but she walked alone; fearful yet bold, like a little child; and the people around her rejoiced and were friendly as to a little child. She was excited. Her body trembled. She held her hands out before her as if she were leaning against the air. She was filled by the strength of the people and she was sustained from every side by hundreds of luminous rays.
I lost sight of her at the gates of the monastery, and recovering myself, I gazed about me. Everywhere there was holiday tumult. There was a ringing of bells and the powerful talk of the people. The evening red fell brilliantly from the heavens and the lake clothed itself in the purple of the reflection. A man walked past me, smiled and asked:
I embraced him and kissed him, like a brother after a long separation, and we found no words to say to each other. Smiling, we remained silent and separated.
At night I sat in the wood above the lake. Again I was alone, but now forever and inseparably united to the soul of the people, the masters and miracle workers of the earth. I sat and listened to all that I had seen and known grow and burn within me in one fire.--I, too, would reflect to the world this light in which everything flamed with great significance and was clothed with the miraculous. It winged my soul with a desire to accept the world as it had accepted me.
I have no words to describe the exultation of that night, when, alone in the darkness, I embraced the whole earth with my love and stood on the height of my experience and saw the world, like a fiery stream of life-force, flowing turbidly to unite into one current, the end of which I could not see. I joyfully understood that the inaccessibility of the end was the source of the infinite growth of my soul and the great earthly beauty. And in this infinity were the innumerable joys of the live human soul.
In the morning the sun appeared to me with a new face. I saw how its rays cautiously and lovingly sank into the darkness and turned it away; how it lifted from the earth the veils of night, and there she stood before me in the beautiful and magnificent jewels of autumn; the emerald field of the great play of peoples and the fight for free play was the holy place in the procession of the celebration of beauty and truth.