Where you crossed by the highway, on a line, the road-surface changed. It was smooth in Delaware, but when you went into Maryland, you felt a change in vibration, and all at once the tires hummed differently. "State line," the sign read. "Entering Nebraska. Speed limit 60 M.P.H." So even right and wrong altered with the sharp snap of a discontinuity, and you stepped harder on the throttle.
At the national boundary the flags showed different colors, though the same breeze blew them. You stopped for customs and immigration, and were suddenly a stranger, unfamiliar. "Look," you said, "that policeman has a different uniform!" You got new money, and even for picture post-cards the stamps had to have another face on them. "Better drive extra carefully," you said. "Wouldn't be good to get arrested over here." That was a funny business! You stepped across a line you couldn't see, and then you were one of those queer people—a foreigner!
But boundaries fade even faster than fences. Imaginary lines need no rust to efface them. Then there will be no quick shifts, and adjustments, and perhaps it will be easier on the mind. They will say as in the beginning: "About where oaks start to get thin, and the pines take over." They will say: "Over across there—can't tell exactly—in the foothills where it gets drier and you start seeing sage-brush.
The stars in their courses! (The chip of granite was nothing but powder under the blows of the hammers.) The stars in their courses! No, he did not believe in astrology, and yet the shifting of the stars showed that the solar system too was changing, and that the earth itself was becoming a more or less habitable place for man. Thus, at some profounder depth of reality, astrology might be right, and the changes in the sky could be taken as symbol of all the grinding wheels of circumstance. The stars in their courses! What was man, little man, to withstand them?
So he blurted on: "You know what I mean! Is it because we killed Charlie? Did something— did God— strike back at us? An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth! Is this why they all—why Joey?—died? Did—what it was—He—use the disease that Charlie was carrying—so that we should all be sure how it was meant?
Then, as he paused, he saw that her face was contorted with horror.
"No, no!" she cried. "Not you too! I faced the others so often alone when you were sick! I knew no arguments, but I knew that it could not be so. I could give them no arguments. All I could give them was my courage!"
She paused, as if the sudden vehemence had exhausted her.
"Yes," she went on, "I felt courage flow out from me like blood! It flowed out to them all, and I grew weaker as it flowed, and I wondered 'Will there be enough? Will there be enough?' And you were talking of Charlie through your fever."
She was silent again, but he could say nothing.
"Oh," she cried, "do not ask me for more courage! I do not know the arguments. I never went to college. All I know is that we did what we thought was best. If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes—as George says— at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than that George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again—the angry God, the mean God—the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let us not bring Him back! Not you too!
Then she stopped, and he saw that her face was between her hands, so that he could not tell whether or not there was tear in it. But he knew that she was crying.
And again he felt small and very humble before her.