As soon as the women had settled their charge, his head lay marvellously still. Mrs Godbold, who had arranged the sheet neatly underneath the yellow chin, touched him with the tips of her fingers. She could not feel life, but knew from having carried the body of her brother, and closed the eyes of several babies, that life was there yet. Indeed, nothing would now divert Mordecai ben Moshe from his intention of following to its source that narrower, but still reliable stream. So he would ignore the many hands which tweaked at his cap, or became involved in the flowing folds of his white gown, to distract, to supplicate. As he strode, the particles of petitions fluttered in his face in tinkling scraps, to melt against his hot skin. Pressure of time would not allow him to stop, to piece together, to communicate, although he was expected, he was expected to know. And did, of course, now. He knew all the possible permutations and combinations. Whereas, at Bienenstadt, his green and supple soul had been forced to struggle for release, the scarred and leathery object which it had become would now stand forth with very little effort. So, too, he had only to touch tongues, including his own, and they would speak. As the purple stream-for it was evening now-wound through the rather stony hills, there came to him thousands asking him to tell them of the immediate past, so that they might be prepared against the future, since many of them feared they might soon be expected to return. The strange part was: he knew, he knew. The cliffs of rock were his scroll. He had only to open the flesh of their leaves to identify himself with the souls of plants. So the thousands waited for him along the banks of the interminable river. Sometimes the faces were those of Jews, sometimes they were gentile faces, but no matter; the change could be effected from one to the other simply by twitching a little shutter. Only, he who had drilled holes, could not stop now for souls, whatever the will, whatever the love. His own soul was carrying him forward. The mountains of darkness must be crossed. Such was his anxiety and haste, Himmelfarb shifted his feet beneath the bedclothes: little more than a fluttering of bones, but not so faint that Miss Hare did not feel it against her cheek. For a moment Mrs Godbold was afraid the old creature might be going off into one of her attacks; there was such a convulsion of the body, such a plunging of the blackened hat. But Miss Hare only settled deeper into a state where her friend was too discreet to follow. As she turned to occupy herself with other things, Mrs Godbold saw on the blistered mouth evidence of gentlest joy. Miss Hare had, in fact, entered that state of complete union which her nature had never yet achieved. The softest matter her memory could muster-the fallen breast-feathers, tufts of fur torn in courtship, the downy, brown crooks of bracken-was what she now willed upon the spirit of her love. Their most private union she hid in sheets of silence, such as she had learnt from the approach of early light, or from holding her ear to stone, or walking on thicknesses of rotted leaves. So she wrapped and cherished the heavenly spirit which had entered her, quite simply and painlessly, as Peg had suggested that it might. And all the dancing demons fled out, in peacock feathers, with a tinkling of the fitful little mirrors set in the stuff of their cunning thighs. And the stones of Xanadu could crumble, and she would touch its kinder dust. She herself would embrace the dust, the spirit of which she was able to understand at last. Himmelfarb's face had sunk very deep into the pillow, it seemed to Else Godbold as she watched. He was stretched straight, terrible straight. But warmer now. For it was at this point that he glanced back at the last blaze of earthly fire. It rose up, through the cracks in the now colourless earth, not to consume, but to illuminate the departing spirit. His ankles were wreathed with little anklets of joyous fire. He had passed, he noticed, the two date-palms of smoking plumes. By that light, even the most pitiable or monstrous incidents experienced by human understanding were justified, it seemed, as their statuary stood grouped together on the plain he was about to leave. So he turned, and went on, arranging the white _kittel__, in which he realized he was dressed, and which he had thought abandoned many years ago in the house on the Holzgraben, at Holunderthal. Then Miss Hare uttered a great cry, which reverberated through the iron shed like the last earthly torment, and began to beat the quilt with the flat of her hands. "Himmelfarb," she cried, "Himmelfarb," the name was choking her, "Himmelfarb is dead! Oh! _Ohhhhhh__!" It died away, but she continued to blubber, and feel the quilt for something she hoped might be left. All the little girls had woken, but not one could find the courage to cry. And now Mrs Godbold herself had come, and when she had touched, and listened, and her intuition had confirmed, she saw fit to pronounce, "He will not suffer any more, the poor soul. We should give thanks, Miss Hare, that he went so peaceful, after all." Just then the alarm clock, with which one of the children must have been tinkering during the day, went off before its usual hour, with a jubilance of whirring tin to stir the deepest sleeper, and Mrs Godbold turned toward the mantel. When she was satisfied, she said, "Mr Himmelfarb, too, has died on the Friday." Although her remark was so thoughtfully spoken, its inference was not conveyed to anybody else. Nor had she intended exactly to share what was too precious a conviction. Then the woman and her eldest daughter quietly went about doing the several simple things which had to be done for the man that had died, while Maudie Godbold pulled on her stiff shoes, and trailed up the hill to fetch the previously rejected Dr Herborn. It was very still now, almost cold for the time of year. The lilies of moonlight dropped their cold, slow pearls. The blackberry bushes were glittering. At that hour, before the first cock, if such a bird survived at Sarsaparilla, the only movement was one of dew and moonlight, the only sound that of a goat scattering her pellets. At that hour, Miss Hare came out of the Godbolds' shed, since there was no longer cause for her remaining. She had witnessed everything but the doctor's signature. In the friable white light, she too was crumbling, it seemed, shambling as always, but no longer held in check by the many purposes which direct animal, or human life. She might have reasoned that she had fulfilled her purpose, if she had not always mistrusted reason. Her instinct suggested, rather, that she was being dispersed, but that in so experiencing, she was entering the final ecstasy. Walking and walking through the unresis-tant thorns and twigs. Ploughing through the soft, opalescent remnants of night. Never actually arriving, but that was to be expected, since she had become all-pervasive: scent, sound, the steely dew, the blue glare of white light off rocks. She was all but identified. So Miss Hare stumbled through the night. If she did not choose the obvious direction, it was because direction had at last chosen her.