Yuan returned to the contemplation, and Lychnis found herself being drawn in—wandering, rather, in a world of fancies on the edge of what was too cold and uncongenial for her to enter. At first the sensations in her body intensified. There was an itch for movement in legs and fingers. She was acutely aware of the thrust of her chin in her hand, the strain of the muscles at waist and abdomen, a fly buzzing in her hair, a pebble under her knee. But a gentle wind played on her calves and head. Discomforts faded. She became aware of the beautiful lines and relations of her body. She relaxed, and the tree-roots on which she was lying seemed to embrace her, to gain contact with her; the life of the tree gained contact with her life. She turned on her back in the embrace of the birch-tree, and began pondering on the delicate tracery of leaves, swaying and glowing in the peaceful sky. She was in a world of trees—birch, poplar, chestnut and ash; tall silver trunks, brown twisted trunks, smooth boles, tender shoots, branches carrying a weight of ivy; green tranquil leaves, broad, flat leaves hanging on long stems, white fluttering leaves like clouds of butterflies; in a world of pale green and misty substance, and deep green with dark, lucid caves, splashes of golden yellow, blurs of red-brown. There was an imperceptible, infinite rustling, an unseen flitting of birds, sometimes a note; a tranquil diffused light, and beyond the tree-tops an immense pure well and medium of light, a warm sun-drenched region of inter-stellar space, longed for by the senses. The roots under her body stretched up to a silver trunk that lifted its weight of foliage into the world of foliage and light, lifting her spirit with it. She was among myriads of leaves, exulting, whispering choirs. It seemed to her that the spirits of those who have loved the light of the sky dwelt in them, tasting the sun and the warm winds, saturated with light, with air, with the unseen medium of life and being. A profound calm, a strength of reposed, victorious soul, pervaded the leaves, a dignity of that which fears neither life nor death, not subject to them. Sometimes a bevy of young leaves fluttered with a gust of angelic laughter, or there was a vast stir of passionless conversation, a communion of those who are beyond passion, reposing in the myriad forest leaves. She felt, certainly, a presence. It was what she had perceived in the hideous faces of the Rishi. A presence that was not a presence; a presence seen in the structure of beauty, but yet it was not beauty; she found it also in music, in a formula, in the valley, in the eyes of Yuan, but it was not any of these; not happiness or unhappiness, nor life or death, but pre-existent and yet non-existent—such phrases from Yuan’s conversation came to her mind. She turned her gaze to the serene and smiling face of the porcelain figure among the leaves. It was a thing of great stillness. It was inactive, but it seemed charged with activity.