The night, however, I passed with little sleep, and much meditation and wakeful dreaming. Then it became evident to me that I was just beginning an apprenticeship to love. And the first lesson showed me that a weak, deluded, selfish heart must suffer pain and torture through love. For love is not yielding, pitiful, indulgent, self-surrendering; it is proud, compelling, inexorable as beauty, as God Himself, who certainly does not love those to whom He is gracious and merciful, and who has never yet taken pity on His elect. In such thoughts I bathed, as in the icy morning dew of the mountains, for the coming day. When my duties of the forenoon were over, I hastened through the already scorching heat to the park, into the bamboo alley, under the erythrina, where I sat down. For a long while I waited, and saw and felt nothing indicative of her presence, and was nevertheless sure she would come. The bamboo scarcely trembled in the blue heat of the sky. The dark trees and shrubs kept still, as though not to frighten away the swarm of silver lights that had descended upon them for rest. Unchangeable, flowing only back upon itself, stood the pillar of spray of the distant fountain dazzlingly in the air; its splashing resounded indistinctly. Only rarely, as though waved by an indolent fan, a hot current of air rolled over to me and eddied about me, sweet and comforting. I looked over toward the fountain, and there she sat on the marble curbing of the pool. Briskly I arose and went toward her with measured steps. She had disappeared. I seated myself upon a shady bench over against the place that she had occupied. Soon she returned with flowers in her hand, and without looking at me, seated herself once more upon the marble. She was as delicate as a shade. An oval face with severe profile, surrounded by nut-brown hair; I could not see her eyes. Her drapery was of cobweb-colored gauze, the clasp of her girdle a simple buckle of soft, shaded vermilion. Face and hands were bloodlessly pale; her figure tall, slight, and fine. Thus she sat there; delicately, and yet with color and warmth, she contrasted with the spraying banner of foam of the fountain. She did not stir. I did not take my eye from her. Once something whirred through the air before her and I saw a humming-bird descend upon the lily blossoms in her hand. And darting back and forth, the gleaming little bird flew several times back to her flowers, so still was she.