That little month of anxious watching and waiting passed so slowly! And
yet so quickly, as one by one its golden moments of hope drained away.
Brett did not return. A month, then a year, while Dr. Gryce made me
leave the Service, to enter his, that all my time might be spent in
watching.
A year; and now another year has passed. Brett would return within the
month. With his Time-mechanism unimpaired, no delay out there in the
Beyond could have affected his return to reach us during that first
little month. With that passed and gone, reason could only show the
futility of expecting him ever. Yet reason plays so small a part, when
it would seek to kill hope.
The aural ray still burns--brave little beacon striving to pierce
infinity. Beside it, for those long, unreasoning hours of vigil, Dr.
Gryce sits and waits; silent, grayer and every day visibly older. The
possibilities of what could have happened to Brett--that myriad of
futile human conjectures--we have long since ceased voicing. Alone, I
sometimes speculate. Has Brett gone on into that outside world of which
we all are only a tiny atom? What is he doing? And then I tell myself,
what is it to me, save that it concerns Brett? The myriad, unfathomable
happenings of Eternal Time in Infinite Space--what right have I, one
tiny mortal, to probe them?
The beacon burns to guide Brett back to us. Will he ever come? I
wonder. My brain, with its logic, says he will not. But my heart says,
"Might he not come tonight?" Or with tonight passed, then tomorrow
he will be here. Thus hope runs on and on, daunted but never broken.
Blessed hope, to make possible a courageous living of this little
life until we ourselves are plunged into that glowing Infinity of the
Hereafter.