“I’m not going in. I shall breathe out the wine that’s in me and watch Fulke worshipping the narcissus in the early dawn. You can go in. I’ll relieve you.” So Ambrose left him, with one last look at the bamboo grove and the floating swan-moon. 13 Days of such journeying followed; sometimes they went in the boats and sometimes wandered by dizzy paths along the sides of the zigzagging mountains among groves of spruce, fir, or high up among pines and slender cascades. The weather was very fair and warm, and the sun was only dimmed by the shadow of the lapis lazuli crags that towered threateningly over the path or by the jade-brown walls of a gorge. At every turn there was some new glimpse of a sun-bathed horizon, or a gleam of the sails of their boats on the shining, enamelled stream. White cranes stalked among the emerald rice-fields. The roofs of villages reposed under the hills, suitably to the contour, and sometimes there were to be seen the quaint eaves of a temple appositely jutting out. And sometimes the glistening cascade fell from their very feet to some green trough in the snowy bloom of cherry, peach and magnolia far below. The spring weather, the exhilarating air of the heights, and a special comradeship that, as Ambrose notes, is apt to accompany such an adventure—at any rate for the first few days—put them all in good spirits with themselves and one another, and the ravines and wrinkled, wizard-faced crags not infrequently echoed with human song. Lychnis usually glided ahead, like a spirit that seeks the consummation of life in some perfect gesture of the dance, and her attendant followed with a more deliberate and serene enjoyment. Terence came next, officially leading, often in colloquy with Such-a-one; and the rest streamed out behind in ever-changing order, gay in their coloured garments, like a marching troop of flowers. They camped one warm night, there being no village and no inn, at the mouth of an unusually gloomy ravine, where the mountains, towering above them, seemed almost to meet. The moon was in her third quarter. Three of the Sages—Terence, Frew-Gaff and Sprot—with Ambrose, were standing among the reeds by the water’s edge, peering into the mysterious, moon-dappled mouth of the gorge. Terence, profoundly stirred in spirit, had received illumination, and his eyes were deep pools troubled by shining moon-angels. He raised his hands up before the mountains and exclaimed: “The Last Wall!” “Meaning,” said Frew-Gaff, “that on the other side of this barrier, which is to be pierced by means of this gorge, we shall find a sort of Fairyland of Pantomime Peaches?” “The land of the Peach-blossom People, undoubtedly, matter-dividing Richard.” “Dancing about in pink and purple tights, I suppose.” “And as real as æther waves, fanatic particle-worshipper.”