and find nobody? They are quite happy. So is the leopardess."

He was comforted, and wiped his eyes as if he had been all his life
used to weeping and wiping, though now first he had tears wherewith to
weep--soon to be wiped altogether away.

We followed Eve to the cottage. There she offered us neither bread nor
wine, but stood radiantly desiring our departure. So, with never a word
of farewell, we went out. The horse and the elephants were at the door,
waiting for us. We were too happy to mount them, and they followed us.

CHAPTER XLV. THE JOURNEY HOME

It had ceased to be dark; we walked in a dim twilight, breathing through
the dimness the breath of the spring. A wondrous change had passed upon
the world--or was it not rather that a change more marvellous had
taken place in us? Without light enough in the sky or the air to reveal
anything, every heather-bush, every small shrub, every blade of grass
was perfectly visible--either by light that went out from it, as fire
from the bush Moses saw in the desert, or by light that went out of our
eyes. Nothing cast a shadow; all things interchanged a little light.
Every growing thing showed me, by its shape and colour, its indwelling
idea--the informing thought, that is, which was its being, and sent it
out. My bare feet seemed to love every plant they trod upon. The world
and my being, its life and mine, were one. The microcosm and macrocosm
were at length atoned, at length in harmony! I lived in everything;
everything entered and lived in me. To be aware of a thing, was to know
its life at once and mine, to know whence we came, and where we were at
home--was to know that we are all what we are, because Another is what
he is! Sense after sense, hitherto asleep, awoke in me--sense after
sense indescribable, because no correspondent words, no likenesses or
imaginations exist, wherewithal to describe them. Full indeed--yet ever
expanding, ever making room to receive--was the conscious being where
things kept entering by so many open doors! When a little breeze
brushing a bush of heather set its purple bells a ringing, I was myself
in the joy of the bells, myself in the joy of the breeze to which
responded their sweet TIN-TINNING**, myself in the joy of the sense, and
of the soul that received all the joys together. To everything glad I
lent the hall of my being wherein to revel. I was a peaceful ocean
upon which the ground-swell of a living joy was continually lifting ne