“Catch cold?” he would ask, “I’ve forgotten how to do it, I think.  I suppose it makes one’s body more sensible always to sleep out-of-doors.  People who live indoors always remind me of something peeled and skinless.”

“Do you mean to say you slept out-of-doors last night in that deluge?” asked Darcy.  “And where, may I ask?”

Frank thought a moment.

“I slept in the hammock till nearly dawn,” he said.  “For I remember the light blinked in the east when I awoke.  Then I went—­where did I go?—­oh, yes, to the meadow where the Pan-pipes sounded so close a week ago.  You were with me, do you remember?  But I always have a rug if it is wet.”

And he went whistling upstairs.

Somehow that little touch, his obvious effort to recall where he had slept, brought strangely home to Darcy the wonderful romance of which he was the still half-incredulous beholder.  Sleep till close on dawn in a hammock, then the tramp—­or probably scamper—­underneath the windy and weeping heavens to the remote and lonely meadow by the weir!  The picture of other such nights rose before him; Frank sleeping perhaps by the bathing-place under the filtered twilight of the stars, or the white blaze of moon-shine, a stir and awakening at some dead hour, perhaps a space of silent wide-eyed thought, and then a wandering through the hushed woods to some other dormitory, alone with his happiness, alone with the joy and the life that suffused and enveloped him, without other thought or desire or aim except the hourly and never-ceasing communion with the joy of nature.

They were in the middle of dinner that night, talking on indifferent subjects, when Darcy suddenly broke off in the middle of a sentence.

“I’ve got it,” he said.  “At last I’ve got it.”

“Congratulate you,” said Frank.  “But what?”

“The radical unsoundness of your idea.  It is this:  All nature from highest to lowest is full, crammed full of suffering; every living organism in nature preys on another, yet in your aim to get close to, to be one with nature, you leave suffering altogether out; you run away from it, you refuse to recognize it.  And you are waiting, you say, for the final revelation.”

Frank’s brow clouded slightly.

“Well?” he asked, rather wearily.

“Cannot you guess then when the final revelation will be?  In joy you are supreme, I grant you that; I did not know a man could be so master of it.  You have learned perhaps practically all that nature can teach.  And if, as you think, the final revelation is coming to you, it will be the revelation of horror, suffering, death, pain in all its hideous forms.  Suffering does exist:  you hate it and fear it.”

Frank held up his hand.

“Stop; let me think,” he said.

There was silence for a long minute.

“That never struck me,” he said at length.  “It is possible that what you suggest is true.  Does the sight of Pan mean that, do you think?  Is it that nature, take it altogether, suffers horribly, suffers to a hideous inconceivable extent?  Shall I be shown all the suffering?”