“I think I write you much more interesting letters than you write me. To be sure I have no books into which to put my thoughts. Also, I have a great deal of time to compose letters to you; Cedric wakes me up so much in the night, and often I cannot go to sleep again. It plays havoc with me as a rule; and yet sometimes, when I’m not too exhausted, there is a certain joy in watching by the dim candle light the rosy upturned face and the little groping mouth. Oh Thyrsis, he is all mine and yours, and we must make him glad he was borned, mustn’t we?” Section 9. Such letters would come at a time when Thyrsis was almost prostrated with exhaustion; and great waves of loneliness and yearning would sweep over him. Ah God, what a fate it was--to labor as he labored, and then to have no means of recreation or respite, no hand to smooth his forehead, no voice to whisper solace! Who could know the tragedy of that aspect of his life? There came one day an incident that almost broke his heart. Down the lake came a private yacht, beautiful and swift, clean as a new penny, its bronze and white paint glistening in the sunlight. It anchored not far out from the point where Thyrsis camped, and a boat put off, and from it three young girls stepped ashore. They were slender and graceful, clad all in white--as spotless as the vessel itself, and glowing with health and joyfulness. They cast shy glances at the tent, and asked Thyrsis to direct them to the nearest farm-house; he watched them disappear through the woods, and saw them return with a basket of fruit. It was just at sunset, and there was a new moon in the sky, and the evening star trembled upon the bosom of the waters. There in the magic stillness lay the vessel--and suddenly came the sounds of a guitar, and of young voices singing. Wonderful to tell, they sang--not “ragtime” and “college songs,” but the chorus of the “Rheintoechter,” and Schubert’s “Auf dem Wasser zu singen”, and other music, unknown to Thyrsis, exquisite almost beyond enduring. It pierced him to the heart; he sat with his hands clenched, and every nerve of him a-quiver, and the hot tears raining down his cheeks. It was loveliness not of this earth, it was an apparition; that presence which had been haunting him ever since he had come to this spot-- “So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, And hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.”