When Argathona left the ancient and pursued her homeward path, the fervor of the day was on the wane, and the sky flamed as with the conflagration of a hero's funeral pyre. The west was a medley of reds and yellows, peach color, gold color, rose color, copper color, orange color. All the splendid metals fused in that limbec; all the luxurious fruits and flowers wantoned in that garden. The sun had fallen behind the dark clouds that girdled the horizon; he had vanished as a king might vanish through dark, swiftly falling curtains, but his glittering retinue still lingered in the Occidental antechamber, brilliant in the liveries of their imperious king. High in heaven the moon swam in a space of unnamable, unthinkable sweetness; it was no more than a half moon, and showed like a shield held sideways when a knight rides down the lists. Far away the sea slumbered, steel-blue like a knight's sword, and its large, noiseless waves suggested the easy breathing of some fearful force asleep, and sleeping, lovely in its peace. Argathona paused on the crest of a ridge and gazed in adoration at the majesty of the dusk. It seemed to her as if she could never weary of looking on such loveliness, and her heart grew cold at the new turn of her thoughts. Must she, indeed, set a term to her delight in life, to the joy of the dawn and the noon and the even and the night, joys renewable to her for ever and ever? She could not understand what it meant to say farewell to the sunlight and the moonlight and the stars, to be no longer a child of the bright earth, to fade away as her mother's essence had faded away, to live and love, and then, in a breath, to live and love no more. Faces of fear seemed to gibber at her through the tree-trunks, the hands of anguish seemed to clasp at her throat as if to strangle her; for the first time she felt and trembled at the horror of the forest. With a cry of pain she turned from the sunset and plunged into the wood, and made for her resting-place in the heart of the groves. There she flung herself upon the turf, and above her the sky was gray with stars, and, sobbing, she sought and found sleep.