sing sublunary matters, and every now and then, their arms, round
each other, gave little convulsive squeezes. The rain had stopped and
the moon shone clear; by its light the trees and flowers were clothed in
colors whose blood had spilled away; the town's murmur was dying, the
house lights dead already. They came out of the park into a road where
the latest taxis were rattling past; a face, a bare neck, silk hat, or
shirt-front gleamed in the window-squares, and now and then a laugh came
floating through. They stopped to watch them from under the low-hanging
branches of an acacia-tree, and Derek, gazing at her face, still wet with
rain, so young and round and soft, thought: 'And she loves me!' Suddenly
she clutched him round the neck, and their lips met.

They talked not at all for a long time after that kiss, walking slowly up
the long, empty road, while the whitish clouds sailed across the dark
river of the sky and the moon slowly sank. This was the most delicious
part of all that long walk home, for the kiss had made them feel as
though they had no bodies, but were just two spirits walking side by
side. This is its curious effect sometimes in first love between the
very young. . . .

Having sent Flora to bed, Felix was sitting up among his books. There was
no need to do this, for the young folk had latch-keys, but, having begun
the vigil, he went on with it, a volume about Eastern philosophies on his
knee, a bowl of narcissus blooms, giving forth unexpected whiffs of odor,
beside him. And he sank into a long reverie.

Could it be said--as was said in this Eastern book--that man's life was
really but a dream; could that be said with any more truth than it had
once been said, that he rose again in his body, to perpetual life? Could
anything be said with truth, save that we knew nothing? And was that not
really what had always been said by man--that we knew nothing, but were
just blown over and about the world like soughs of wind, in obedience to
some immortal, unknowable coherence! But had that want of knowledge ever
retarded what was known as the upward growth of man? Had it ever stopped
man from working, fighting, loving, dying like a hero if need were? Had
faith ever been anything but embroidery to an instinctive heroism, so
strong that it needed no such trappings? Had faith ever been anything
but anodyne, or gratification of the aesthetic sense? Or had it really
body and substance of its own? Was i