The creations of his boyhood's imagination had survived, the
Sweep, the Dustman, and the Lamplighter, then why not the far more
powerful creations in the story...? Thought was never lost!
'But no man in his senses can believe such a thing!' he exclaimed, as
the train ran booming through the tunnel.
'That's the point,' whispered a voice beside him. 'You are _out_ of
your senses. Otherwise you could not feel it!'
He turned sharply. The carriage was empty; there was no one there. It
was, of course, another part of himself that supplied the answer; yet
it startled him. The blurred reflection of the lamp, he noticed, cast
a picture against the black tunnel wall that was like a constellation.
The Pleiades again! It almost seemed as if the voice had issued from
that false reflection in the shaking window-pane....
The train emerged from the tunnel. He rushed out into the blaze of the
Interfering Sun. The lovely cluster vanished like a dream, and with it
the hint of explanation melted down in dew. Fields sped past with a
group of haystacks whose tarpaulin skirts spread and lifted in the
gust of wind the train made. He thought abruptly of Mother....
Perhaps, after all, he had taught her something, shown her Existence
as a big, streaming, endless thing in which months and years, possibly
even life itself, were merely little sections, each unintelligible
unless viewed as portions of the Whole, and not as separate,
difficult, puzzling items set apart.
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