Yet within him was the patience which comes of wild expectancy. His mind was as couched as his body for the moment. He had not fasted for years in the wilderness, and communed with the spirits of the hidden creatures without learning the secret of their immobility. To him who could speak with plants and beasts, with hills and trees, the Night itself could converse. So surely as the crystal fluid which is the air streams in circles of waves about our sphere, so surely ranged his sense. At a certain moment of time, without stirring, he changed. Intensity of search gathered in his eyes, and filled them with power. He remained for a little time longer in a state of tension so extreme, so strung to an act that there might have streamed a music from him, as from the Memnon in the sands when light and heat thrill the fibres of the stone. His look was concentrated upon a point above him where, look as one might, one could have seen nothing to break the translucent veil of dark. Yet, after a time, looking just there, one might feel rather than know a something coming. The watcher certainly did. Deep within the shadow of the cowl his eyes dilated and narrowed, his lips parted, his breath came quick and sharp. But he did not move. The sense of a presence heightened; one knew it much nearer. By and by, one could have seen pale forms wavering in the fluid violet of the night, like marsh-fires going and coming--and could guess them one and the same. Bodily substance could only be inferred. But he who waited, tense for the hour, knew that the hour had come. Her white face, made narrow by the streaming curtain of her hair, her white arms and feet were luminous in that dark place, and revealed the semblance of her body. His cowl was thrown back; he had bowed his head to his knees. She stood over him, looking down upon him, not moving. Her eyes were clear and wide, and her parted lips smiled. The rise and fall of her breasts could be heard as they stirred her gown. She put out her hand and laid it on his head; she stooped to him as he looked fearfully up, and, meeting his face, kissed him. No words passed between them, but he rose and stood by her, and she took his hand. Together, hand in hand, they went deep into the valley, and the night hid them under the stars, and the silence swallowed up the sounds of their bare footfalls. V The philosopher sat barefoot in the hollow of his valley, and wrote diligently in a book. He paused, pen in hand, and looked over the folds of the hills where the haze of heat hung blue, and brown at the edges. It lay upon the hill-tops like a mist. The sky was grey, and the land was pale, burned to the bone. Heavy masses of trees in the hanging wood showed lifeless and black. No bird sang, but there were crickets in the bents, shrilling inconceivably. The swoon of midsummer was over all, and Sanchia was coming.