A sudden joy burst over him in a flood. Struggle and search folded their wings and slept. An immense happiness wrapped him into the very woof of the pattern wherein they sat. A thousand loose and ineffective moods of his life found coherence, as a thousand rambling strands were gathered home and fastened into place. And the Pattern quivered and grew brighter. 'I am the story because I thought of it first. You, as a version of its beauty--a channel for its delivery--belong utterly to me. You can no more resist me than a puddle can resist the stars' reflection. You increase me. We increase each other.' 'You say you thought it first,' he cried, feeling the light he radiated flow in and mingle with her own. 'But who are you? Where do you come from?' 'Over there somewhere, I think,' she laughed, while a ray like fire flashed out in the direction of the Pleiades that climbed the sky towards the East. 'You ought to know. You've been hunting for me long enough!' 'But who _are_ you?' he insisted again, 'for I feel it's you that have been looking for me--I've so often heard you calling!' She laughed again till the whole web quivered. Through her eyes the softness of all the seven Pleiades poured deliciously into him. 'It's absurd that such a big thing as you could hide so easily,' she said. 'But you'll never hide again. I've got you fast now. And you've got me! It's like being reflected together in the same puddle, you see!' The dazzling radiance passed as she said it into a clearer glow, and across the fire of it he caught her eyes steadily a moment, though he could not see the face complete. Two brilliant points of amber shone up at him, as stars that peep from the mirror of a forest pool. That mental daylight-searching seemed all explained, only he could not remember now that there was any such thing at all as either searching or daylight. When 'out' like this, waking was the dream---the sunlight world forgotten. 'This Pattern has always been my own,' she continued with infinite softness, yet so clearly that his whole body seemed a single ear against her lips, 'for I've thought it ever since I can remember. I've lived it. This Network of Stars I made ages ago in a garden among far bigger mountains than these hills, a garden I knew vividly, yet could not always find--almost as though I dreamed it. The Net included the-- oh, included everything there is, and I fastened it to four big pines that grew on the further side of the torrent in that mountain garden of my dream--fastened it with nails of falling stars. And I made the Pleiades its centre because I loved them best of all. Oh! Orion, Orion, how big and comforting your arms are! Please hold me tight for ever and ever!' 'But I know it, too, that lovely dream,' he cried. 'It all comes back to me. I, too, have dreamed it with you then somewhere--somewhere---!' His voice choked. He had never known that life could hold such sweetness, wonder, joy. The universe lay within his arms.