It was the darkest hour of the night, only the stars shone brightly, and not till he was upon the pale clouds of the drifted narcissi could he tell they were there, not till their scent came up at him.  The night was very still as well as dark, but Ishmael noted neither circumstance.  His own soul held all of sound and colour and light for him, and he recked of nothing external.  This news, the simplest, oldest thing in the way of news that there is, seemed to him never to have been told to anyone before—­never, at least, to have been so wonderful.  All the beauties of Cloom, of life, all the trouble his own short span had felt, all the future held, seemed to fall into place and be made worth while.  This was what he had lived for without knowing it—­not to make Cloom finer for himself, not to save his own soul or carve out a life for himself, but this—­to make of himself this mysterious immortality.  Always he had waited for “something” to happen, always at moments of keenest pleasure he had been conscious there was more he did not feel:  depths unplumbed, heights unscaled, some master-rapture that would explain all the others and that he never came upon.  Even beauty had had this sting for him; he had always felt that, however lovely a thing were, there was something more beautiful just round the corner, for ever slipping ahead, like a star reflected in a rain-filled rut.  Now for the first time he was aware of a dizzying sensation as though for one moment the gleam had stayed still, as if Beauty for a flash were not withdrawing herself, as though time for one moment stood, and that moment was self-sufficient, free of the perpetual something that was always just ahead—­more, actually capturing that something.  The moment had the quality of immortality, although it reeled and was caught up again in the inexorable march, but, drunken with it, he stayed tingling in the cold dawn.

And if, mixed with that draught, there were this much of venom—­that he rejoiced at having at last so ousted Archelaus, in the fact that indeed flesh of his flesh should inherit after him and Archelaus be outcast for ever, at least in that first rapture he was unaware of it.

BOOK III

RIPENING

CHAPTER I

UNDER-CURRENTS

Spring waxed full, buds burst into flower, then petals dropped and the hard green fruit began to swell, and the blades of the corn showed perceptibly higher every week.  Summer, warm and lazy, big with all her ripening store, brooded upon the land, and Phoebe Ruan, guarding the growing life she held, seemed, with all the care taken of her, to lose vigour and gaiety.  She seemed to wish to withdraw from everyone, from Ishmael most of all, as though she only wished to sit and commune with the secret soul of the child beneath her heart.  She was almost beautiful these days, touched by a gravity new to her, and with an added