I turned from it and sat down on the wall, facing the churchyard. It was a quiet spot, designed for contemplation. The faint wind in the trees was like a low pleasant tune, and there was nothing melancholy in its charm. To me it had a kind of happy beauty which I loved. I had fallen into a mood when I seemed close to my dreamland. It lay beyond an enchanted sea, whose shore was that bright cloud there. I could hear the low, continuous sound of surf breaking on the pale glistening sand; I could see deep lagoons, and sleepy rivers winding slowly down through green lawns and meadowlands. I tried to draw nearer, but it swam away from me, leaving only a broken cloud, and beyond that the endless sky. Had it already been, or was it still to come? Was all this world, apparently so solid under my feet, but my dream, and should I presently awaken to that other? I had a sudden temptation to risk everything: the fascination of death stole over me, quickening my curiosity to know what lay beyond. Only _should_ I know? Death might not really solve anything! If I tried to force an entrance I might lose my only chance of finding one. A large, splendid butterfly, a red admiral, flitted over the wall and perched on one of the grave-stones, spreading his gorgeous wings, black and crimson, flat against the grey, sun-baked stone. He remained there with the stillness of a painted thing, drinking in the heat, knowing nothing save that. The afternoon was waning. The sun had crept down the sky till he was almost hidden, and the violet shadows were blurred on the tangled grass. Again one of those strange, breathless silences seemed to wash up as from some depth of Time, and I listened――listened for a sign, a word, for in the stillness the faintest whisper would have reached me. What were they, these strange pauses in life, in everything――these feelings of suspense, of expectation? A kind of ineffable happiness and peace descended upon me. A delicate spirit of beauty seemed to be wandering through the unmown grass, which bent beneath its feet, wandering under the broad-leaved trees, beside the grey old church. Surely there was something of which all this was only the reflection! I could feel it; I knew it. What did it mean? what was I waiting for? what was it I desired? I thought of my soul as a little candle-flame, hovering at my lips, ready to take flight. If I blew it from me it might flicker away over the grass, down into the graves, up into the air, a tiny tongue of flame, no bigger than a piece of thistledown. I thought of the old, silent, listening house, darkening now to twilight, mysterious, haunted, with its closed doors and brown portraits: a dream-thing that, too, and all the ghosts who lived there. CHAPTER XII