en,
and so years afterwards it seemed to him, as vividly as on this evening
when the tawny moon grew golden as it climbed the empty heavens, dimming
the stars around it.

What they talked of, even though it was Sylvia who spoke, seemed
external to the spirit of the hour. They seemed to have reached a point,
some momentary halting-place, where speech and thought even lay outside,
and the need of the spirit was merely to exist and be conscious of
its existence. Sometimes for a moment his past life with its
self-repression, its mute yearnings, its chrysalis stirrings, formed a
mist that dispersed again, sometimes for a moment in wonder at what
the future held, what joys and troubles, what achings, perhaps, and
anguishes, the unknown knocked stealthily at the door of his mind, but
then stole away unanswered and unwelcome, and for that hour, while Mrs.
Falbe finished with Lady Ursula, while Hermann smoked and sighed like a
sentimental German, and while he and Sylvia sat, speaking occasionally,
but more often silent, he was in some kind of Nirvana for which its own
existence was everything. Movement had ceased: he held his breath while
that divine pause lasted.

When it was broken, there was no shattering of it: it simply died away
like a long-drawn chord as Mrs. Falbe closed her book.

"She died," she said, "I knew she would."

Hermann gave a great shout of laughter.

"Darling mother, I'm ever so much obliged," he said. "We had to return
to earth somehow. Where has everybody else been?"

Michael stirred in his chair.

"I've been here," he said.

"How dull! Oh, I suppose that's not polite to Sylvia. I've been in
Leipzig and in Frankfort and in Munich. You and Sylvia have been there,
too, I may tell you. But I've also been here: it's jolly here."

His sentimentalism had apparently not quite passed from him.

"Ah, we've stolen this hour!" he said. "We've taken it out of the
hurly-burly and had it to ourselves. It's been ripping. But I'm back
from the rim of the world. Oh, I've been there, too, and looked out over
the immortal sea. Lieber Gott, what a sea, where we all come from, and
where we all go to! We're just playing on the sand where the waves have
cast us up for one little hour. Oh, the pleasant warm sand and the play!
How I love it."

He got out of his chair stretching himself, as Mrs. Falbe passed into
the house, and gave a hand on each side to Michael and Sylvia.

"Ah, it was a good thing I just caught t