y round the
kitchen and behind the house. The first breath of air that he had
noticed for days was stirring the leaves, and he saw the new moon like
a golden sickle poised above the broken summit of a hayrick. It was a
serenely beautiful nights with an atmosphere undoubtedly cooler than
any they had had of late; he looked at the peaceful fields, and the
fruit trees and the barn roof, all so gently, imperceptibly touched by
the young and tender moonbeams; and he thought that the thin yellow
crescent was being watched by thousands and thousands of eyes, that
men were turning their money, and wishing for luck, for fame, or for
satisfied love. But he only of all men might not wish for the desire
of his heart, and to him only the moon could bring nothing but pain.

He went through the kitchen garden, and stood under an apple tree
staring back at the window of her room. And still older memories
sprang up and grew strong, so that they might attack and overcome and
utterly undo him. The wild bad fancies of his adolescence came
thronging upon him. Imagination and fact entangled themselves; the
past and the present fused, and became one vast throbbing distress. He
thought if he crept beneath the window and called to her, she would
answer his call. If he told her to do so, she would come out in her
night-dress--she would walk bare-footed through the fields, and plunge
with him into the wonderful wood. If he told her to do it, she would
go into the stream, and dance and splash--realizing that old
dream--the white-bodied nymph of the wood for him to leap at and carry
off into the gloom. He wrenched himself round, and made his way
rapidly from the garden to the meadow. He could not support his
thoughts. The proximity of the girl was driving him mad.

All through the little meadow and again in the wider fields the air
had a soft fragrance; the sky was high and quite clear, with a few
stars; the whole earth, for as much as he could see of it, seemed to
be sleeping in a deep delightful peace. Beyond his fences there were
the neighbors' farms, and then there were the heath, the hills; and
beyond these, other counties, other countries, the rest of the turning
globe, the universe it turned in--and once again he had that feeling
of infinite smallness, the insect unfairly matched against a solar
system, the speck of dust whirled as the biggest stars are whirled,
inexorably.

At the confines of his land he leaned upon a gate, groaning and