’If anyone comes to the cabin I shall have to hold the door to.  There is a comic side to every adventure,’ he said, ’and a more absurd one it would be difficult to imagine.’

The day had begun in a ridiculous adventure—­the baptism of the poor child, baptized first a Protestant, then a Catholic.  And he laughed a little, and then he sighed.

’Is the whole thing a fairy-tale, a piece of midsummer madness, I wonder?  No matter, I can’t stay here, so why should I trouble to discover a reason for my going?  In America I shall be living a life in agreement with God’s instincts.  My quest is life.’

And, remembering some words in her last letter, his heart cried out that his love must bring her back to him eventually, though Poole were to take her to the end of the earth, and at once he was carried quickly beyond the light of common sense into a dim happy world where all things came and went or were transformed in obedience to his unexpressed will.  Whether the sun were curtained by leafage or by silken folds he did not know—­only this:  that she was coming towards him, borne lightly as a ball of thistle-down.  He perceived the colour of her hair, and eyes, and hands, and of the pale dress she wore; but her presence seemed revealed to him through the exaltation of some sense latent or non-existent in him in his waking moods.  His delight was of the understanding, for they neither touched hands nor spoke.  A little surprise rose to the surface of his rapture—­surprise at the fact that he experienced no pang of jealousy.  She had said that true love could not exist without jealousy!  But was she right in this?  It seemed to him that we begin to love when we cease to judge.  If she were different she wouldn’t be herself, and it was herself he loved—­the mystery of her sunny, singing nature.  There is no judgment where there is perfect sympathy, and he understood that it would be as vain for him to lament that her eyebrows were fair as to lament or reprove her conduct.

Continuing the same train of thought, he remembered that, though she was young to-day, she would pass into middle, maybe old age; that the day would come when her hair would be less bright, her figure would lose its willowness; but these changes would not lessen his love for her.  Should he not welcome change?  Thinking that perhaps fruit-time is better than blossom-time, he foresaw a deeper love awaiting him, and a tenderness that he could not feel to-day might be his in years to come.  Nor could habit blunt his perceptions or intimacy unravel the mystery of her sunny nature.  So the bourne could never be reached; for when everything had been said, something would remain unspoken.  The two rhythms out of which the music of life is made, intimacy and adventure, would meet, would merge, and become one; and she, who was to-day an adventure, would become in the end the home of his affections.

A great bird swooped out of the branches above him, startling him, and he cried out:  ‘An owl—­only an owl!’ The wood was quiet and dark, and in fear he groped his way to the old stones; for one thing still remained to be done before he left—­he must burn her letters.