The instant of inspiration seemed now to be reflected from all sides at once from a multitude of cloudy circumstances of what had happened or of what might have happened.  The instant flashed forth like a point of light and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused form was veiling softly its afterglow.  O!  In the virgin womb of the imagination the word was made flesh.  Gabriel the seraph had come to the virgin’s chamber.  An afterglow deepened within his spirit, whence the white flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light.  That rose and ardent light was her strange wilful heart, strange that no man had known or would know, wilful from before the beginning of the world; and lured by that ardent rose-like glow the choirs of the seraphim were falling from heaven.

    Are you not weary of ardent ways,
    Lure of the fallen seraphim? 
    Tell no more of enchanted days.

The verses passed from his mind to his lips and, murmuring them over, he felt the rhythmic movement of a villanelle pass through them.  The rose-like glow sent forth its rays of rhyme; ways, days, blaze, praise, raise.  Its rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men and angels:  the rays from the rose that was her wilful heart.

    Your eyes have set man’s heart ablaze
    And you have had your will of him. 
    Are you not weary of ardent ways?

And then?  The rhythm died away, ceased, began again to move and beat.  And then?  Smoke, incense ascending from the altar of the world.

    Above the flame the smoke of praise
    Goes up from ocean rim to rim
    Tell no more of enchanted days.

Smoke went up from the whole earth, from the vapoury oceans, smoke of her praise.  The earth was like a swinging swaying censer, a ball of incense, an ellipsoidal fall.  The rhythm died out at once; the cry of his heart was broken.  His lips began to murmur the first verses over and over; then went on stumbling through half verses, stammering and baffled; then stopped.  The heart’s cry was broken.

The veiled windless hour had passed and behind the panes of the naked window the morning light was gathering.  A bell beat faintly very far away.  A bird twittered; two birds, three.  The bell and the bird ceased; and the dull white light spread itself east and west, covering the world, covering the roselight in his heart.

Fearing to lose all, he raised himself suddenly on his elbow to look for paper and pencil.  There was neither on the table; only the soup plate he had eaten the rice from for supper and the candlestick with its tendrils of tallow and its paper socket, singed by the last flame.  He stretched his arm wearily towards the foot of the bed, groping with his hand in the pockets of the coat that hung there.  His fingers found a pencil and then a cigarette packet.  He lay back and, tearing open the packet, placed the last cigarette on the window ledge and began to write out the stanzas of the villanelle in small neat letters on the rough cardboard surface.