His ears heard the roar, and his eyes beheld the welter of the vast waters of strange emotions and fierce passions and intolerable joys that had ever beaten against the arid fortress in which he had been content to have his bleak and indifferent being. He wiped the sweat from his brow and leaned dejected against the jamb of the caravan door. What a mighty and dreadful power was Fate. No wonder the Greeks made their gods bow down before its supremacy. The irony of it. Again a Greek conception. The Greeks were right. How otherwise could he explain the staggering situation in which he found himself? What but the relentless cruelty of Fate compelled him, at that moment when the world revealed itself in terms of vital beauty and infinite meaning, to return as return he must, to the old withered life of Ealing and the blight of Martha, and the routine of brain-exhausting, nerve-atrophying, soul-killing, meaningless drudgery in the Court of Chancery? What single hour’s happiness had he, intellectual automaton, ever got out of it? What had his brain-cramped life held that could compare with that morning’s thrill of intense physical fitness, with that evening’s leap towards the Unknown of Passion? ‘Oh, damn!’ he said despondently. According to his duty as husband and man of grave responsibilities, he ought even now to be on his way to Paris. But he had been too weary of spirit to make the effort; at any rate too much in love with the day’s strange freedom. Besides, how could he leave caravan and horse adrift? The caravan he might have abandoned. Its value was of no account to a man of his fortune. But the horse was a living thing, a creature of responsive sentiment, like a dog. It rubbed its muzzle against his arm as though to manifest fondness. He must make fair and square provision for the horse. To-night’s friendly encounter had showed him the way. To-morrow, at the fair, would he sell for a song the whole outfit to his late kindly neighbours; and then the stern and relentless journey back to England. The gradual traffic going fair-wards passed him by. But he did not hear it, wrapped in his despairing thoughts. The night wore on. The full moon arose, and, shining through the over-arching vault of foliage, fantastically diapered the white road. From his breast pocket, at last, he drew the silver flageolet and looked at it in wistful perplexity. He put it to his lips, at first idly and then with a quivering sense of mastery. And lo! he played the whole of the melody through from beginning to end with its song of birds and its elfin laughter and its longings and haunting mockery just as the young man had played it in the starlight of his garden. And, as he played, his heart was uplifted in a strange exultation, such as--he now remembered dimly--had inspired him once before when he had put the flageolet to his lips. He caught at an elusive memory and gripped it hard, and stared wide-eyed before him with open mouth.