She obeyed him. He sat down opposite, with his back to a tree, and drew from his garment a small sort of flute and played. She found presently, as she listened to his slow, meditative theme, that she had forgotten her fear of the mountains. She began to gaze at them, seeking to become conscious of them, to shape the vague and profound emotion that they gave rise to, and express it. “Eternity,” she said. “They are eternal.” “On the contrary,” he replied. “In a little while they will have gone, and an ocean perhaps will flow there.” “Then it is I that am eternal, and the mountains made me remember.” “Eternity is in you, but you are not eternal.” Swiftly a thought of old Wang Li came to her mind. “The truth that can be stated is not truth,” she shot at him. He smiled. “The truth can be played with the flute, though. Listen.” It was so, she thought, hearing something behind the notes he played that was like the mountains, but with no terror. And she saw without shrinking that the glittering eyes of fierce beasts were gazing steadfastly from the darkness, and tenderer creatures were near them. Then a python swayed down his head from the branch of a tree close by, and she put out her orchid-hand and touched the ivory skin. All that she remembered afterwards, for at the time she was not conscious of python, tiger, or deer; only of that which sounded from Yuan’s flute, that sang, as she put it, to itself in her and in the beasts, the intoxicating godhead that remains when ice vanishes, music is not listened to, and spirit itself has disappeared into nothing. But afterwards, when the spell of the singing flute had lifted, she came to the conclusion that the experience of sublimity is unnecessarily serious. “I should prefer something suaver,” she told Ambrose, “more restrained—the god without the intoxication.” 30 Lychnis told Ambrose that the coldness of her reception, when she came back next morning, was a surprise to her. “I was only thinking and thinking of what I had seen and done in the night, of how I felt about Yuan,” she said, “and to find all that anger was horrible. There has been a change. Sir Richard frowns at me. Sprot is delighted, the little beast, because he can impute something to me. Fulke hates me. I prefer it. But our party is breaking up, and it is not like it used to be. I can’t help it. They have no business to interfere when I am going through with an experience.” Her anger rose. “They shall stay here until I have finished with it, or I will stay here alone, or with you. You will never be against me?”