But for the most part he fancied himself walking through scented,
autumnal woods, beside a woman whose eyes were kind and dear, whose
lips were sweet and tempting: a girl he had known not an hour but whom
already he loved, though he himself did not dream it nor discover it
till too late.... And with these many other visions formed and
dissolved in dream-like phantasmagoria; but of them all the strongest
and most recurrent was that of the girl in the black riding-habit,
walking by his side down the aisle of trees. So that presently the
tired and overwrought man believed himself talking with her, reasoning,
arguing, pleading desperately for his heart's desire;... and wakened
with a start, to hear the echo of her voice as though she had spoken
but the instant gone, to find his own lips framing the syllables of her
name--"Sophia!"

Thus strangely he came to know that beyond question he loved. And he
stopped short and stood blinking blindly at nothing, a little
frightened by the depth and strength of this passion which had come to
him with such scant presage, realising for the first time that his need
for her was an insatiable hunger of the soul.... And she was lost to
him; half a world lay between them--or soon would. All his days he had
awaited, a little curiously, a little sceptical, the coming of the
thing men call Love; and when it had come to him he had not known it
nor guessed it until its cause had slipped away from him.... Beyond
recall?

Abruptly he regained consciousness of his plight, and with an effort
shook his senses back into his head. It was not precisely a time when
he could afford to let his wits go wool-gathering. And he realised that
he had been, in a way, more than half-asleep as he walked; even now he
was drowsy, his eyes were heavy, his feet leaden--and numb with cold