Derry wondered if it were symbolic, this indifference of the crowd.
Was the world's pageant of horrors and of heroism thus unseen by the
eyes of the unthinking?
And now Jean ascended, the top of her hat first--a blur of gray, then
the red of the rose that he had sent her, a wave of her gray muff as
she saw him. He went down to meet her, and stood with her on the
landing. Beneath the painting, on one side, ran the inscription, "No
pent up Utica confines our powers, but the boundless Continent is
ours," on the other side, "The Spirit moves in its allotted space; the
mind is narrow in a narrow sphere."
Thousands of men and women came and went and never read those words.
But boys read them, sitting on the stairs or leaning over the rail--and
their minds were carried on and on. Old men, coming back after years
to read them again, could testify what the words had meant to them in
the field of high endeavor.
Jean had seen the painting many times, but now, standing on the upper
gallery floor with Derry, it took on new meanings. She saw a girl with
hope in her eyes, a young mother with a babe at her breast; homely
middle-aged women redeemed from the commonplace by that long gaze ahead
of them; old women straining towards that sunset glow.
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