So he might have sung had he known the lines. For he felt himself raised up as on the strong, swift wings of the morning, lifted to the very gate of Heaven. It was on such a love as this that the Platonic philosophy had been built; and now――now in his own life――it had come true. Fair, and pure, and holy――down from the garden of God――it had fallen into his soul, had poured through the open gates of Heaven, to bathe him in its light. He turned upon his pillow and smiled. He stretched out his arms wide to the great, fragrant mother-night, and she bent down over him, cool and dark and silent, and kissed him softly on his forehead, and on his mouth and eyes. He could not sleep. A strange restlessness, a ‘spirit in his feet,’ seemed to draw him from his bed, and leaving his cubicle, he stood in his night-dress on the cold floor. A flood of moonlight lay across the room, and he watched it falling through the air, a silent, rapid stream. How still everything was! how light! Softly, softly, on tip-toe, he made his way to the window, and climbing on to a chair, looked out. In the grounds it was light with that same cold light, clear, yet not quite clear, earth and sky seeming to be blended in one strange misty radiance, pale, bluish, almost white. And the moonlight lay, still and dreamy, everywhere, more tangible, yet more shadowy, than the light of day. If one stretched out one’s hands, one might almost feel it, he thought, might almost brush it away like a great white silky cobweb of woven flame. The stone gable of the house stood out sharply black against the sky, and the shadows on the grass were black as ink. Above the long row of still and leafless trees he saw the belt of Orion, and to the right of that, the white, broken moon faintly edged with blue. It was like the dawning of some wonderful, icy day upon an unexplored, a new and mysterious world; and through the cold misty light he half expected to see the moving forms of those who live in the unknown. He did indeed see a figure――a figure coming toward him, stepping slowly down a wide silver stair that reached from Heaven――a figure clad in fair armour, and with dark hair floating out against the stars.... He was calling to him from without ... he beckoned with his hands ... he waited, waited.... A shudder ran through Graham’s body: he seemed no longer to be in the dormitory, but to stand somewhere beyond the gates of death. He clasped the bars of the window with his hands; he leaned against the iron bars; then he opened out his arms wide and smiled.... ‘What are you doing?... Iddesleigh!... Graham!’ It was Brocklehurst’s voice. His cubicle was next the window, and he had been awakened. ‘Nothing; nothing,’ Graham answered, startled, turning quickly round. ‘I was looking out.... I forgot.... Why are you not asleep?’ He went over to his friend, and sat down by his side. Brocklehurst had already cuddled under the clothes again.