Late at night, when the moon was up and Ruby and the rest of the household were asleep, Lychnis crept from the curtains of her black, roomy bed, and stole out on the verandah. Ambrose perceived her, standing in the moon like a pink crêpe-de-Chine ghost with a white core, her feet together and her hands behind her head, in a lovely, dart-like attitude, as if she were balancing for a flight into the scented, dark heart of the foliage. Waiting a moment to observe accurately the excellent shape of her head, with the hair drawn in to the neck, and to commit to memory certain curves of her bust, which slightly lifted the front of her glimmering shift and purified the soul like a vision of the Grail, he stirred. She turned, smiled, and vanished, returning again with a wrap like a mist about the moon. They sat side by side. “It is hot, is it not?” she asked. “I was composing my account of the day,” he answered. “I want your impressions.” “Do you record impressions of all of us?” she inquired. “Most of you, from time to time, tell me things that are of interest.” “Of interest! You have interests, of course. One forgets that.” “Oh yes, I have interests. To record with accuracy the essentials of an episode—that is one of them.” “What an interest! Really, an interest is not very interesting—not so interesting as a passion. You have no passions?” “They only cloud the vision of clear-eyed desire,” he answered—“in fact, they actually prevent attainment.” “I’m afraid I’ve got a passion,” she observed—“a sort of general, unattached passion. If it suddenly fastened on someone the results might be frightful.” “Abeyance it, and give me to-day’s impressions.” “Oh, impressions! Well, in the first place, it’s hot. Then—I don’t quite know what impressions I have. I mean, they may come from inside me. Can one make impressions on oneself?” “Let’s hear.” “Well, I have the idea that life may have some point, after all—that there may be a moment when you can say, Now one has really flowered into a moment of existence between nothing and nothing. I desire to exist, to be—not merely to remain a vague thing, an I, that cannot possess a single experience. One is only the beginning of a being, the material for one.” “True. But you think you may be about to begin to exist. What are the symptoms?” “I don’t quite know. How shall I put it?” She considered the question in silence. Then: “Would you say there was something unusually splendid and beautiful about the night?” “Perhaps there is, now you mention it.” “Do you happen to notice anything more than ordinarily intoxicating in the scent of the trees?” He sniffed. “Perhaps, now you point it out.” “Have you by any chance a sort of feeling that out there in the darkness, in a halo of extreme darkness, there might be some unseen experience that would complete you?” “Um! I recognize the state of mind you describe as one which is familiar to human beings.”