CERTAIN ELEMENTS FOR THE CHARTER , AND HIS MOTHER'S PILGRIMAGE ACROSS THE SANDS ALONE TO MECCA Charter had come a long way very swiftly in his search for realities. If it is required of man, at a certain stage of evolution, to possess a working knowledge of the majority of possible human experiences, in order to choose wisely between good and evil, Charter had, indeed, covered much ground in his thirty-three years. As a matter of fact, there were few degrees in the of sensation, into which he had not been . His was the name of a race of wild, sensual, physical types; a name still held high in old-world authority, and identified with men of heavy hunting, heavy dining and drinking. The Charters had always been admired for high temper and fair women. True, there was not a germ of the present Charter mental capacity in the whole race of such men commonly mated, but Quentin's father had married a woman with a marvellous endurance in prayer—that old, dull-looking formula for producing sons of strength. A silent woman, she was, a woman, an angry woman, with the stuff of martyrdoms in her .
 
Indeed, in her father, John Quentin, reformer, there were stirring materials for memory. His it was to ride and preach, to evil and the good, with the of a living God shining bright and directly upon it. A figure, this Grandfather Quentin, an ethereal bloom at the top of a tough stalk of Irish peasantry. First, as a soldier in the British army he was heard of, a stripling with a girl's waist, a pigeon breast, and the soul's divinity breathing itself awake within. His was a poet's at the sight of morning mists, wrestling with the daybreak over the mountains; and everywhere his went, were left behind Quentin's songs—crude verses of a singer, never seeking permanence more than Homer; and everywhere, he set about to correct the of men, absolutely unscared and grandly . A fighter for simple loving-kindness in the heart of man, a worshiper of the bright fragment of truth to his eyes, a lover of children, a man who walked thrillingly with a personal God, and was so and ignited by the spirit that, every day, he strode singing into battle. Such was John Quentin, and from him, a living part of his own strong soul, sprang the woman who mothered Quentin Charter, sprang pure from his dreams and , and doubtless with his prayer for a great son, marked in the of her soul.... For to her, bringing a man into the world meant more than a passage of begun with passion and ended with pain.
 
Her single bearing of fruit was a pilgrimage. From the hour of the conception, she drew apart with her own ideals, held herself from fleshly things, almost as one without a body. Charter, the strongly-sexed, her merchant-husband, the laughing, scolding, joking gunner; admirable, even , to Nineteenth Century men of hot dinners and nights—showed her all that a man must not be. Alone, she crossed the burning sands; her body and brain in the cool of evenings, expanded her soul with dreams projected far into the purple heavens and whispered the and poems which had fed the hunger of her father.
 
It glorified her temples to brood by an open window upon the night-sky; to conceive even the garment's of that Inspiring Source, to Whom solar systems are but a glowworm , and the soul of man than them all. Sometimes she carried the concept farther, until it seemed as if her heart must cease to beat: that this perfecting fruit of the universe, the soul of man, must be for a time in the womb of woman; that the seemed content with this mystery, nor counted not æons spent, nor burnt-out suns, nor wasting that the habitable crusts—if only One smile back at Him at last; if only at last, on some chilling planet's , One Spirit lift His and out of to the Father.
 
The spirit of her own father was nearer to her in this wonderful pilgrimage than her husband, to whom she was cold as Etruscan glasses in the deep-delved earth (yet filled with what potential wine!). He called her Mistress Ice, brought every art, , and expression in the Charter evolution to bear upon her; yet, farther and farther into heights he could not dream, she fled with her forming babe. Many mysteries were cleared for her during this period—though clouded later by the of .... Once, in the night, she had with a sound in her room. At first she thought it was her husband, but she heard his breathing from the next . At length before her window, shadowed against the faint light of the sky, appeared the head and shoulders of a man. He was less than ten feet from her, and she heard the of his fingers over the dresser. For an instant she endured a horrible, , feminine fright, but it was at once by a fine assembling of under the control of genuine courage. The words she whispered were quite new to her.
 
"I don't want to have to kill you," she said softly. "Put down what you have and go away—hurry."
 
The burglar fled quietly down the front stairs, and she heard the door shut behind him. Out of her trembling was soon evolved the consciousness of some great triumph, the nature of which she did not yet know. It was pure that the brought. The courage which had steadied her through the crisis was not her own, but from the man's soul she bore! There was never any doubt after that, she was to bear a son.
 
There is a rather vital defect in her pursuing the way al............