“Where are we now?”

Neither knew.  A policeman put them right for Portland Place.  Half past one!  And it would be dawn soon after three!  They walked soberly again now into the outer circle of Regent’s Park; talked soberly, too, discussing sublunary matters, and every now and then, their arms, round each other, gave little convulsive squeezes.  The rain had stopped and the moon shone clear; by its light the trees and flowers were clothed in colors whose blood had spilled away; the town’s murmur was dying, the house lights dead already.  They came out of the park into a road where the latest taxis were rattling past; a face, a bare neck, silk hat, or shirt-front gleamed in the window-squares, and now and then a laugh came floating through.  They stopped to watch them from under the low-hanging branches of an acacia-tree, and Derek, gazing at her face, still wet with rain, so young and round and soft, thought:  ‘And she loves me!’ Suddenly she clutched him round the neck, and their lips met.

They talked not at all for a long time after that kiss, walking slowly up the long, empty road, while the whitish clouds sailed across the dark river of the sky and the moon slowly sank.  This was the most delicious part of all that long walk home, for the kiss had made them feel as though they had no bodies, but were just two spirits walking side by side.  This is its curious effect sometimes in first love between the very young. . . .

Having sent Flora to bed, Felix was sitting up among his books.  There was no need to do this, for the young folk had latch-keys, but, having begun the vigil, he went on with it, a volume about Eastern philosophies on his knee, a bowl of narcissus blooms, giving forth unexpected whiffs of odor, beside him.  And he sank into a long reverie.

Could it be said—­as was said in this Eastern book—­that man’s life was really but a dream; could that be said with any more truth than it had once been said, that he rose again in his body, to perpetual life?  Could anything be said with truth, save that we knew nothing?  And was that not really what had always been said by man—­that we knew nothing, but were just blown over and about the world like soughs of wind, in obedience to some immortal, unknowable coherence!  But had that want of knowledge ever retarded what was known as the upward growth of man?  Had it ever stopped man from working, fighting, loving, dying like a hero if need were?  Had faith ever been anything but embroidery to an instinctive heroism, so strong that it needed no such trappings?  Had faith ever been anything but anodyne, or gratification of the aesthetic sense?  Or had it really body and substance of its own?  Was it something absolute and solid, that he—­Felix Freeland—­had missed?  Or again, was it, perhaps, but the natural concomitant of youth, a naive effervescence with which thought and brooding had to part?  And, turning the page of his book, he noticed that he could no longer see to read, the lamp had grown too dim, and showed but a decorative glow in the bright moonlight flooding through the study window.  He got up and put another log on the fire, for these last nights of May were chilly.