He went off to dress moodily, wishing savage wishes, so adding, perhaps, to that electricity in the air. And Vincent gave it his quota of desire also, in his reckless determination to regain Paradise, as it was lost, through a woman. And that play of Romeo and Juliet in the scented garden--Juliet, whose bounty was "as boundless as the sea"--was a bit of pure paradise to him. He had never, he thought, been in love before. He had never known what love was. Those other loves of his had been mean, ungenerous, calculating. So he was at his best, his brightest, during dinner. Lance, on the contrary, was at his worst, his dullest; and Vincent made this his excuse for going to his room betimes. He was not due at the palace till twelve, but he was anxious to ensure the coast being clear, and Lance seemed just in the mood when a fellow sits up sulkily, out of pure cussedness, and drinks whiskey-and-water if he can find a companion on whom to vent his cavillings. In truth Lance would have liked to do so. He wanted to feel miserable; but after Vincent had gone, and he was left alone in the balcony, sleep began to assert itself. He found even his despair becoming dreamy, and being obstinate, tried to fight against the fact. The result being that he finally fell asleep in his lounge chair with a soundness and unconsciousness usually reserved for bed. Fell asleep, and promptly relaxed into content with happy dreams of Erda's return to him; for his, left to itself, was a healthy soul. And so were the vast majority of those which, through patient yet eager eyes, were looking into the scarce-lit darkness of the streets, as the pilgrims, crowded into an almost solid mass, seemed to slide with a slow, almost unseen movement, through them. They were waiting for the dawn. If nothing new came before then, they would pass on towards the 'Cradle of the Gods.' So, scarcely seen, restless yet restful, their feet on the next rung of the golden stairs, they waited. And overhead the young moon had risen with a copper-coloured edge to its crescent of light. For the glow was still in the sky, and the troopers in the Fort, resting, after their long day, in Indian fashion by sprawling on their beds and gossiping, had dragged these beds into the open and discarded most of their clothing, since the night was strangely still and warm. So even the wonder what had become of the _risaldar-sahib_ was languid.