“What were you playing?” Eva asked, as Denis paused. He turned around. “I’ve been trying to compose a passage from the Song of Songs,” he answered. He played again and sang in an agreeable voice: “Arise, thou lovely one, for the winter is past.” The sound of the organ stirred a feeling of hatred in Christian. He gazed upon Eva’s form. In a gown of sea-green, slim, far, estranged, she sat there. And as he looked at her there blended with his hatred of the music another feeling--one of oppression and of poignant pain, and his heart began to throb violently. “Arise, thou lovely one, and come with me,” Denis sang again, and Crammon softly hummed the air too. Eva looked up, and her glance met Christian’s. In her face there was a mysterious expression of loftiness and love. Christian took the globe from its stand and played with it. He let it roll back and forth between his hands on the flat balustrade like a rubber ball. The sphere suddenly slipped from him, fell and rolled along the floor to Eva’s feet. Denis and Crammon gathered about it; Christian came down from the gallery. Eva picked up the globe and went toward Christian. He took it from her, but she at once held out her hands again. Then she held it daintily poised upon the fingertips of her right hand. Her left hand, with fingers spread out, she held close to it; her head was gently inclined, her lips half open. “So this is the world,” she said, “your world! The blue bits are the seas, and that soiled yellow the countries. How ugly the countries are, and how jagged! They look like a cheese at which mice have nibbled. O world, the things that creep about on you! The things that happen on you! I hold you now, world, and carry you! I like that!” The three men smiled, but a psychical shudder passed through them. For they could no longer stand in human erectness on this little round earth. A breath of the dancer could blow them down into the immeasurable depths of the cosmos. And Christian saw that Denis, fighting with an impulse, regarded him. Suddenly the Englishman came up to him and held out his hand. And Christian took the hand of his victorious rival, and knew in his secretest mind that an ultimate advantage was his. For between Eva’s face and the smudged globe he seemed to see a ghostly little figure which charmed her with its glance and which was a tiny image of himself--Eidolon. They planned that summer to return to the manor and hunt the deer, as was the custom of the gentlemen of that region. But when summer came all things had changed, and Denis had glided from the smooth sphere of earth into the depth. XIV One day in London Crammon came to Christian, sat down affectionately beside him, and said: “I am leaving.” “Where are you going?” Christian asked in surprise. “North, to fish salmon,” Crammon replied. “I’ll join you later or you can join me.” “But why go at all?”