om above."

The strange complexity of dreams, which seems so foolish, brings them
nearer to reality than we suppose, for there is nothing real which has
not manifold meanings. Before this vision of his townspeople faded, Bart
saw Ann slowly walk over from the group in which she had risen to be a
queen, to that group whose members were worn with disappointment and
age; as she went he saw her perfectly as he had never seen her before,
the hard shallow thoughts that were woven in with her unremitting effort
to do always the thing that she had set herself to do; and he saw, too,
a nature that was beneath this outer range of activity, a small
trembling fountain of feeling suppressed and shut from the light. In
some strange way as she stood, having grown older by transition from one
group to the other, he saw that this inner fountain of strength was
increasing and overflowing all that other part which had before made up
almost the entire personality of the woman. This change did not take
place visibly in the other people among whom she stood. It was in Ann he
saw the change. He felt very glad he had seen this; he seemed to think
of nothing else for a long time.

He forgot then all the detail of that which he had seen and thought, and
it seemed to him that he spent a long time just rejoicing in the divine
life by which all things were, and by which they changed, growing by
transformation into a glory which was still indistinct to him, too far
off to be seen in any way except that its light came as the light comes
from stars which we say we see and have never really seen at all.

Through this joy and light the details of life began to show again. The
two forces which he had always supposed had moulded his life acted his
early scenes over again. His young mother, before the shadow of despair
had come over her, was seen waiting upon all his boyish footsteps with
cheerful love and patience, trying to guide and to help, but trying much
more to comfort and to please; and his father, with a strong body and
the strength of fixed opinion and formed habits, having no desire for
his son except to train and form him as he himself was trained and
formed, was seen darkening all the boy's happiness with unreasonable
severity, which hardened and sharpened with the opposition of years into
selfish cruelty. Toyner had often seen these scenes before; all that
was new to him now was that they stood in the vivid light of a new
interpretation. Ah