splendid moon, now
soaring in mid-heaven, seemed set there as a symbol for him, and him
alone. "Selene.... Selene.... Selene...." went the hoofs of the great,
red horse, like the strokes of a Rhapsodist, beating time to the music
in his heart....

* * * * *

And Sophy, too, was all be-glamoured. She had heard the fairy-harp, she
had listened to music blown from the land of Heart's Desire. Ior, the
fairy chief, had kissed her eyes and lips. She was amazed, bemused--deep
down in her heart there was a great fear. Yet there was joy also. Not
the sane joy of everyday ... but a fragile, iridescent trembling as of a
dewy gossamer spun between the lintels of the door of Dreams. She was
afraid to move lest she should destroy this delicate, fine-spun joy.
Beyond its veil glimmered the wings of golden dreams. She knew well how
Diana must have felt after she had kissed the sleeping shepherd.

She was like one in some old-time fable, who gives a wanderer a cup of
water, and, lo! after drinking, the wanderer shakes back his cloak of
hodden-grey, and it is Eros himself glowing against the twilight--she
had entertained, unawares, the mightiest angel of them all. The soft,
electric plumes of Love had folded down upon her. She was smothered in
his sparkling wings, yet this lovely death only released her to new
life. It was only her self of later years that was dying softly. She
felt herself gleaming, slipping from the hard shell of years--a pearl
released, a pearl bathed in seas of wonder.

Back to her earliest girlhood she was washed ... back, back to that
shore where all is dream and miracle.... When she had loved Cecil, she
had not been so young; she was younger now than when she had wept over
her first lover's death. She was not only young--she was youth itself.
She was not standing outside the door of dreams as she had fancied, but
within it. That trembling, iridescent gossamer of joy shut out
reality--the past, the future--shut her in with the lovely
serving-maidens, dreams fulfilled.... It seemed to her that all the
poetry of the world was flowering in her heart. Her breast felt full of
roses ... red and white roses of love for every mood....

Her little travelling clock struck twelve. It seemed like the voice of a
malicious fairy rousing her from her too lovely trance. She started up.
The collie sprang up with her, and stood alert, ears cocked, eyes upon
her face. She looked about her dazedly.