>—Stephaneforos!

> What were they now but cerements shaken from the body of death— the fear he had walked in night and day, the incertitude that had ringed him round, the shame that had abased him within and without— cerements, the linens of the grave?

> His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her graveclothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.

>—You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity too.

>—Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not even one friend.

> —I will take the risk, said Stephen.

> —And not to have any one person, Cranly said, who would be more than a friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.

>April 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it.

>Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

>April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.