There was no answer. There had been a change in Yuan, like the change that comes over a man at the moment of death. Her breath troubled her, and she beat in terror at the gates of his mind. “Oh, Yuan! Yuan! Answer for pity’s sake!” But he had closed the gates of his mind against her for ever. She stormed, now, to come in, to be his, to accept the whole sequel of her actions, to accept the experience to which she had given herself in its entirety. But the experience had committed treason against her; she was forsaken of God. “Oh what has happened? What is the matter?” she pleaded. “Why have you gone cold to me?” But she pleaded with a porcelain idol in a dark mountain temple. Her lands still lay in his like lilies in the hands of an image. She tore them away, and took hold of the window-sill and bowed her head into them and sobbed, until the fear of the universe that had turned mercilessly against her silenced even her sobbing with its formidable cold. Then there was a movement on the still face of the image; the god put out a ray of protection against the terror that threatened to overwhelm her, but he left her without refuge from her grief and dismay. She was to face that, he seemed cruelly to determine, unaided. After a time he touched her on the shoulder and beckoned her to follow him. She went after him into the twilight garden behind the temple, and there he plucked a peach from a little tree and bade her eat it. “This fruit,” he said, “is only for the favoured of God when they have become fitted to endure deep experiences.” Saying this he walked away, and she followed him across the torrent, homeward through rain that beat her now and loved her no more. He held his face from her. Once, indeed, he turned to her suddenly, and she seemed, almost against credence, to see an expression of suffering. But before it had gained a hold even on her memory it was gone, and he strode on again. 42 The oppressive heat of summer was over, and during the still nights when the lotus fades Lychnis heard of the wild geese flying southward. She saw nothing of Yuan for nine days. But entering the summer pavilion among the tree-tops one brilliant night of autumn she found him seated cross-legged on the floor, in a haze of moonlight, ragged, bare-chested, in a rapt meditation. He made no sign of having perceived her. She sat herself down in his neighbourhood and waited, recognizing in the moonlight—ghostly remembrance of summer sunshine she was used to there—details of the bleached, airswept room. Her eyes were drawn to the space of vast, shimmering sky in the door. A branch of pine thrust across that space, she remembers, and she watched the delicate shadow of the pine-branch swaying slightly on the bare floor, travelling remorselessly like time towards the idol seated by the doorway. He was so still that soon she believed herself to be dreaming.