CHAPTER XXI. THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

The last rays of the setting sun touched the gorgeous Autumn woods with
a loving, bright glow, and the day stole pensively away into a purple
bed beyond the sight of the eyes. From a lonely spot by the river, Fleda
watched the westering gleam until it vanished, her soul alive to the
melancholy beauty of it all. Not a human being seemed to be within the
restricted circle of her vision. There were only to be seen the
deep woods, in myriad tints of bronze and red and saffron, and the
swift-flowing river. Overhead was the Northern sky, so clear, so
thrilling, and the stars were beginning to sparkle in the incredibly
swift twilight which links daytime and nighttime in that Upper Land.
Lonely and delicately sad it all looked, but there was no feeling of
loneliness among those who lived the life of the Sagalac. Many a man has
stood on a wide plain of snow, white to the uttermost horizon, or in the
yellow-brown grass of the Summer prairie, empty of all human life so far
as eye could see, and yet has felt no solitude. It is as though the
air itself is inhabited by a throng of happy comrades whispering in the
communion of the invisible world.

As a child Fleda had often gazed upon just such scenes, lonely and
luminous, but she was only conscious then of a vague and pleasant awe, a
kindly confusion, which, like the din of innumerable bees, lulled wonder
to sleep. Even as a child, however, something of what it meant had
pierced her awe and wonder. Once as she crossed a broken, bare mountain
of Roumania she had seen a wild ass perched upon a high summit gazing,
as it were, over the wide valley, where beneath, among the rocks,
other wild asses wandered. There was something so statue-like in this
immovable wild creature that Fleda had watched it till it was hid
from her view by a jutting rock. But the thing which made a lasting
impression, drawing her nearer to nature-life than all that had chanced
since she was born, was the fact that on returning, hours after, the
wild ass was still standing upon the summit of the hill, still gazing
across the valley. Or was it gazing across the valley? Was there some
other vision commanding its sight?

So a young wife not yet a mother loses herself for hours together in a
vista of unexplored experience. Fleda had passed on, out of sight of the
wild ass on the hills, but for ever after the memory of it remained
with her and the picture of it sprang to her eye