The novel impressions of Florence had helped in the disintegration. Nepenthe--it's sunshine, its relentless paganism--had done the rest. It shattered his earlier outlook and gave him nothing in exchange. Nothing, and yet everything. That vision of Angelina! It filled his inner being with luxurious content; content and uncertainty. It was there, at the back of every dream, of every intimate thought and every little worldly phrase that he uttered. He was like a man who, looking long at the sun, sees its image floating in heaven, on earth--wherever he casts his eye. Angelina! Nothing else was of any account. How would it all end? He drifted along in blissful apprehension of what the next day might bring. She seemed to have become genuinely well-disposed towards him of late, though in rather a mocking, maternal sort of fashion. The poetic vein had definitely run dry. Impossible to make things rhyme, somehow. Perhaps his passion was too strong for technical restraints. He tried his hand at prose: "Your eyes bewilder me. I would liken you to a shaft of sunlight, a withering flame--a black flame, if such there be--for your grace and ardour is even as a flame. Your step is laughter and song. Your hair is a torrent of starless night. The sun is your lover, you god. He takes joy in your perfection. Your slender body palpitates with his imprisoned beams. He has moulded your limbs and kissed your smooth skin in the days when you ... nevermore will you whiten those kisses...." "It won't do," he sadly reflected, laying down the pen. "The adaptation is too palpable. Why does everybody anticipate my ideas? The fact is, I have nothing to say. I can only feel. Everything went right, so long as I was in love with myself. Now everything goes wrong." Then he remembered Keith's pompous exhortation. "Find yourself! You know the Cave of Mercury! Climb down, one night of full moon--" "There is something in what he says. This very night I'll go." It was particularly hard for him that evening. The Duchess was dining with a party at Madame Steynlin's; it was an open secret that the entertainment would end in a moonlight excursion on the water; she would not return till very late. Angelina would be alone, accessible. It was her duty to guard the house in the absence of its mistress. He might have gone there on some pretext and talked awhile, and looked into her elvish eyes and listened to that Southern voice, rich and clear as a bell. Almost he yielded. He thought of the ineptitude of the whole undertaking and, in particular, of those slippery stairs; one might break one's neck there at such an hour of the night. Unless one wore tennis shoes-- Well, he would wear them. He would resist the temptation and approve himself a man. Everybody, even the Duchess, was always telling him to be a man. He would find himself. Keith was right. The night came.