(10)dusting? Were there then for Mrs. MacNab who had been trampledinto the mud for generations, had been a mat for King and Kaiser,moments of illumination, visions of joy, at the wash tub, say,with her children? (Yet two had been base born and one haddeserted her) Aat the public house, drinking? Turning overscraps in her drawers? Some cleavage of the dark there must havebeen, some channel in the depths of obscurity through which lightenough issued to twist her face, smiling in the glass, and makeher, turning to her job again, mumble out the old Music hall song.

Walking the beach the mystic, the visionary, were possessedof intervals of comprehension perhaps; suddenly, unexpectedly,looking at a stone, stirring a puddle with a stick, heard anabsolute answer, so that they were warm in the frost and hadcomfort in the desert. The truth had been made known to them.But Mrs. McNab was none of these. She was no skeleton lover,who voluntarily surrenders and makes abstract and reduces themultiplicity of the world to unity and its volume and anguish toone voice piping clear and sweet an unmistakable message. Theinspired, the lofty minded, might walk the beach, hear in the lullof the storm a voice, behold in some serene clearing a vision, andso mount the pulpit and make public how it is simple, it is certain,our duty, our hope; we are one. Mrs. McNab continued to drinkand gossip as before. She was toothless almost; she had painsin all her limbs. She never divulged her reasons for openingwindows and dusting bedrooms, and singing, when her voice was gone,
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