activity of these as it to the renewal of its toil, finding them
undisturbed. Our most piercing insight yields no deeper conception
of life than that of perpetual building and unbuilding; and during
what we call our rest, it is often most active in executing its
inscrutable will. All along the dark chimneys of the brain,
clinging like myriads of swallows deep-buried and slumbrous in
quiet and in soot, are the countless thoughts which lately winged
the wide heaven of conscious day. Alike through dreaming and
through dreamless hours Life moves among these, handling and
considering each of the unredeemable multitude; and when morning
light strikes the dark chimneys again and they rush forth, some
that entered young have matured; some of the old have become
infirm; many of which have dropped in singly issue as companies;
and young broods flutter forth, unaccountable nestlings of a night,
which were not in yesterday's blue at all. Then there are the
missing--those that went in with the rest at nightfall but were
struck from the walls forever. So all are altered, for while we
have slept we have still been subject to that on-moving energy of
the world which incessantly renews us yet transmutes us--double
mystery of our permanence and our change.

It was thus that nature dealt with Isabel on this night: hours of
swift difficult transition from her former life to that upon which
she was now to enter. She fell asleep overwhelmed amid the ruins
of the old; she awoke already engaged with the duties of the new.
At sundown she was a girl who had never confessed her love; at
sunrise she was a woman who had discarded the man she had just
accepted. Rising at once and dressing with despatch, she entered
upon preparations for completing her spiritual separation from
Rowan in every material way.