to the fitful twanging of the fiddles as the night-wind bore it from the
farmhouse, and to the ceaseless thud of the dancers, and the peals of gross
laughter. She stretched out her little hand to feel for his.

"It is so nice to lie here and hear that noise," she said. "I like to feel
that strange life beating up against me. I like to realise forms of life
utterly unlike mine." She drew a long breath. "When my own life feels
small, and I am oppressed with it, I like to crush together, and see it in
a picture, in an instant, a multitude of disconnected unlike phases of
human life--a mediaeval monk with his string of beads pacing the quiet
orchard, and looking up from the grass at his feet to the heavy fruit-
trees; little Malay boys playing naked on a shining sea-beach; a Hindoo
philosopher alone under his banyan tree, thinking, thinking, thinking, so
that in the thought of God he may lose himself; a troop of Bacchanalians
dressed in white, with crowns of vine-leaves, dancing along the Roman
streets; a martyr on the night of his death looking through the narrow
window to the sky, and feeling that already he has the wings that shall
bear him up" (she moved her hand dreamily over her face); "an epicurean
discoursing at a Roman bath to a knot of his disciples on the nature of
happiness; a Kaffer witchdoctor seeking for herbs by moonlight, while from
the huts on the hillside come the sound of dogs barking, and the voices of
women and children; a mother giving bread-and-milk to her children in
little wooden basins and singing the evening song. I like to see it all; I
feel it run through me--that life belongs to me; it makes my little life
larger, it breaks down the narrow walls that shut me in."

She sighed, and drew a long breath.

"Have you made any plans?" she asked him presently.