VIII
L’ENVOI
And so, at last, the plowman, turning the furrows of life, comes to the boundary that divides the known from the unknown—the wilderness from the sown field. Whatever we may one day find beyond, is already there in every detail—only, I lack the clairvoyant gift, and turn for a brief backward glimpse. It is no vision of artistic triumph that comes to me tonight ... not the memory of Chekhov’s radiant heroine ... not the triste picture of that broken flower of the Limehouse ... something even more real than these: a real child, trouping with wandering players, away from a mother’s care ... a slim-legged little girl, who slept on station benches and telegraph tables, who running across a foot-bridge lost her poor possessions in the swift black water, who from a train or hotel window stared silently into the night.
“What are you looking at, Lillian?”
“Nothing, Aunt Alice, just looking.”