I exhausted myself in weaving variations on these words, and the evening
was far advanced before my mirth ceased. Then a drowsy quiet overcame me;
a pleasant languor which I did not attempt to resist. The darkness had
intensified, and a slight breeze furrowed the pearl-blue sea. The ships,
the masts of which I could see outlined against the sky, looked with their
black hulls like voiceless monsters that bristled and lay in wait for me.
I had no pain--my hunger had taken the edge off it. In its stead I felt
pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me, and glad not to be
noticed by any one. I put my feet up on the seat and leant back. Thus I
could best appreciate the well-being of perfect isolation. There was not a
cloud on my mind, not a feeling of discomfort, and so far as my thought
reached, I had not a whim, not a desire unsatisfied. I lay with open eyes,
in a state of utter absence of mind. I felt myself charmed away. Moreover,
not a sound disturbed me. Soft darkness had hidden the whole world from my
sight, and buried me in ideal rest. Only the lonely, crooning voice of
silence strikes in monotones on my ear, and the dark monsters out there
will draw me to them when night comes, and they will bear me far across
the sea, through strange lands where no man dwells, and they will bear me
to Princess Ylajali's palace, where an undreamt-of grandeur awaits me,
greater than that of any other man. And she herself will be sitting in a
dazzling hall where all is amethyst, on a throne of yellow roses, and will
stretch out her hands to me when I alight; will smile and call as I
approach and kneel: "Welcome, welcome, knight, to me and my land! I have
waited twenty summers for you, and called for you on all bright nights.
And when you sorrowed I have wept here, and when you slept I have breathed
sweet dreams in you!"... And the fair one clasps my hand and, holding it,
leads me through long corridors where great crowds of people cry,
"Hurrah!" through bright gardens where three hundred tender maidens laugh
and play; and through another hall where all is of emerald; and here the