drinking
in the scented warmth of the air. Then suddenly he flung himself face
downwards on the grass at the edge of the stream, burying his face in
the daisies and cowslips, and lay stretched there in wide-armed ecstasy,
with his long fingers pressing and stroking the dewy herbs of the field.
Never before had Darcy seen him thus fully possessed by his idea; his
caressing fingers, his half-buried face pressed close to the grass, even
the clothed lines of his figure were instinct with a vitality that
somehow was different from that of other men. And some faint glow from
it reached Darcy, some thrill, some vibration from that charged
recumbent body passed to him, and for a moment he understood as he had
not understood before, despite his persistent questions and the candid
answers they received, how real, and how realized by Frank, his idea
was.

Then suddenly the muscles in Frank's neck became stiff and alert, and
he half-raised his head, whispering, "The Pan-pipes, the Pan-pipes.
Close, oh, so close."

Very slowly, as if a sudden movement might interrupt the melody, he
raised himself and leaned on the elbow of his bent arm. His eyes opened
wider, the lower lids drooped as if he focused his eyes on something
very far away, and the smile on his face broadened and quivered like
sunlight on still water, till the exultance of its happiness was
scarcely human. So he remained motionless and rapt for some minutes,
then the look of listening died from his face, and he bowed his head
satisfied.

"Ah, that was good," he said. "How is it possible you did not hear? Oh,
you poor fellow! Did you really hear nothing?"

A week of this outdoor and stimulating life did wonders in restoring to
Darcy the vigor and health which his weeks of fever had filched from
him, and as his normal activity and higher pressure of vitality
returned, he seemed to himself to fall even more under the spell which
the miracle of Frank's youth cast over him. Twenty times a day he found
himself saying to himself suddenly at the end of some ten minutes'
silent resistance to the absurdity of Frank's idea: "But it isn't
possible; it can't be possible," and from the fact of his having to
assure himself so frequently of this, he knew that he was struggling and
arguing with a conclusion which already had taken root in his mind. For
in any case a visible living miracle confronted him, since it was
equally impossible that this youth, this boy, trembling on the verg