Presently, the moonlight began to lose its lustre. It grew pale, and, as it were, anxious; dark billows of clouds threatened to swallow up its silver coracle, and presently the world grew suddenly black with its submergence, the woods and meadows disappeared, and Henry and Angel began playfully to strike matches to see each other's faces. Thus they suddenly flared up to each other out of the darkness, like Rembrandts seen by lightning, and then they were lost again, and were only voices fumbling for each other in the dark. Yet, even so, lips and arms found each other without much difficulty, and when they began to think of the last train, and fear they would miss it, but waited for just one last good-night kiss under their sacred tree, the world suddenly lit up again, for the moon had triumphed over its enemies, and come out just in time to give them its blessing. CHAPTER XXVI CONCERNING THE BEST KIND OF WIFE FOR A POET We are apt sometimes to complain that so much of importance in our lives is at the dispensation of accident, yet how often too are we compelled to confess that some of the happiest and most fruitful circumstances of our lives are due to the far-seeing diplomacies of chance. Among no set of circumstances is this more true than in the fateful relations of men and women. While, in a blind sort of way, we may be said to choose for ourselves the man or woman with whom we are to share the joys and sorrows of our years, yet the choice is only superficially ours. Frequently our brains, our antecedent plans, have no part in the decision. The woman we choose appears at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in an undesirable environment, with hair and eyes and general complexion different in colour from what we had predestined for ourselves, short when we had made up our minds for tall, and tall when we had hoped for short. Yet, in in spite of all our preconceptions, we choose her. This is not properly a choice in which the intelligence confessedly submits to violence. It is the compulsion of mysterious instincts that know better than our brains or our tastes. Now had she been asked beforehand, Esther might not have sketched out a Mike as the ideal of her maiden dreams, nor indeed might Henry have described an Angelica, any more than perhaps Mike an Esther, or Angelica a Henry. Yet chance has only to place Esther and Mike, and Angelica and Henry in the same room together for less than a minute of time, and they fly into the arms of each other's souls with an instant recognition. This is a mystery which it will take more than biology to explain.