CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR IN WHICH I VANQUISH A DEMONIAC, AND ENTER INTO GLORY This is written a month later. The next day passed eventless. I kept to the plateau, for now I had even greater cause not to incur needless risks. After supper I sought my seat of the night before, my mind made up. Again I saw the moon creep up the sky, and it was full that night; its immense disk was a perfect circle. I sat watching the grotesque, ever-changing shapes evolved from my pipe smoke, silvery luminous in the moonshine, and wondering just how and where I would begin my search in the morning. Then my unchecked thoughts drifted to Celeste, and as the minutes glided by I felt the restraint which I had placed upon myself slipping more and more. I made no effort to stay my imaginings, or to turn their trend. The hour was made delicious by this mental revel; by sublime visions of what the future would be. Most rigidly had I held myself in check since that night on the peak, when I woke to a sense of my condition, and whither it was leading me. Now I would relax, and suffer my feelings to assume predominance again, for I was weary of the constant battle to banish this girl from my brain, and anyway, the game was about played. Unless Buck came upon me that night, I would speedily be beyond his reach. As my unleashed emotions mastered me more and more, a keen restlessness seized me, the natural result of unsatisfied longing. The bench where I had passed contented hours the night before became at length unendurable and I arose, my face set hungrily toward the whispering woods. Sweetly it lured me with its breath of odorous greenness; strongly it drew me by its very mystery of being, and I responded. I would go to the Dryad's Glade. I was without coat or hat. My shirt was open at the throat and the sleeves were rolled above my elbows, for the day had been one of the hottest I had ever known, and in the early night the heat had not yet been conquered by the dew and the shadows. How well and strong I was! I tarried for a moment before the unlighted Lodge to enjoy a full conception of my superb physical vigor. It is something to make a man rejoice--this mere knowledge of brute power. I had it in perfection that night, and flooding my maligned lungs with a deep-drawn breath of Nature's exquisite attar, I moved away.