On a bright morning early in June I was allowed out for the first time since my illness, and I insisted on going alone. As I came out into the warmth of the sun I felt a charm as of a mysterious new birth. I went straight to the woods. The green alleys winding in front of me amid tall old trees, in all the vivid richness of early summer, seemed exquisitely beautiful. It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was. I lay down on my back on the warm, dry moss and listened to a skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky. No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing. It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself. And then a curious experience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed to me external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool. A cloud rose in the sky, and passed in a light shower that pattered on the leaves, and I felt its freshness dropping into my soul, and I felt in all my being the delicious fragrance of the earth and the grass and the plants and the rich brown soil. I could have sobbed with joy, but in the midst of it I heard the sound of footsteps, and looked behind me quickly, to see the figure of one of the two idiots, who lived in a hovel outside the village, approaching. This was the man; there was a woman also, his sister. He was perfectly harmless, and he drew near now with smiles meant to be ingratiating. He held an empty pipe in his hand, and made guttural noises that I knew were asking me for tobacco. I told him I had none, but he would not go away. He stood right over me, a grin on his deformed face. The big, misshapen head, the horrible, slobbering mouth, the stupid persistence, all filled me with a cold rage. He had spoiled everything; I hated him, and I could have killed him, for it. But he still stood there and jibbered with his ugly, dripping mouth. It was only when I struck at him savagely with my stick that he moved off, glancing back at every step. And when he was gone I felt nothing but a kind of cold disgust and animosity, mingled with shame at my own conduct. All the beauty had gone out of the woods, and I got up and went home. CHAPTER VI