He was upon very still, deep water,
glasslike, with only vague threads and tremors to show what might
issue in resistless currents. He had been in such a place, in his
planetary life, over and over and over again. This concatenation had
formed it, or that concatenation; the surrounding phenomena varied,
but essentially it was always the same, like a dream place. The
question was, would he turn his boat, or raft, or whatever was beneath
him, or his own stroke as swimmer, and escape from this glassy place
whose currents were yet but tendrils? He could do it; it was the
Valley of Decision.... But so often, in all those lives whose bitter
and sweet were distilled into this one, he had not done it. It had
grown much easier not to do it. Sometimes it had been illusory love,
sometimes ambition, sometimes towering pride and self-seeking,
sometimes mere indolent unreadiness, dreamy self-will. On he had gone
out of the lower end of the Valley of Decision, where the tendrils
became arms of giants and decisions might no longer be made.
CHAPTER XV
The laird of Glenfernie stayed longer from home than, riding away, he
had expected to do. It was the latter half of August when he and Black
Alan, Tam Dickson and Whitefoot, came up the winding road to
Glenfernie door. Phemie it was, at the clothes-lines, who noted them
on the lowest spiral, who turned and ran and informed the household.
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