“Oh, August, my darling, what ails you? Speak to me! Speak to me!” she cried wildly.
A half-dozen men came dashing down the hill; they had spoken with August and Aimee as they passed on their way; then when the storm was at its height, seeing the horses galloping by riderless, they knew that some accident must have befallen them.
Aimee saw them coming, and redoubled her cries.
“What is the matter?” “Are you hurt?” “Were you thrown from your horses?” It was a babel of sounds; a confusion of questions.
“I do not know! Oh, it is August!” answered Aimee incoherently.
“Stand back,” said one who had been stooping over August. Continuing in a low tone, “He is dead, struck by lightning.”
“No! no! no!” shrieked Aimee shrilly: “He was speaking but an instant ago; can’t you see that he is not dead! Why, he is smiling!”
She clasped him more closely in her arms, and rocked herself back and forth as a mother soothes her child. Gently they loosed her hold, and through the sobbing trees bore their dripping burden to the nearest farmhouse, soothing Aimee’s frantic grief with sympathetic words.
August had been so amused at Aimee’s petulance and childish fear that he had reached out his hands to call her to him as he would have called a wayward child; in this attitude the descending bolt struck him. He experienced for one brief instant the shock and sense of earthly pain, followed immediately by a feeling of lightness and freedom—which none but children experience in the physical body, and they but seldom—glad to be, glorying in existence—which, instead of being lost through the change, had become intensified and augmented. It seemed that a film had been swept from his sight; all things were clearer and larger; and things which had appeared enveloped in mystery—difficult to understand—stood out plain and simple, like the white letters upon a blackboard.
His spirit, freed from earthly aches and pains, from the uncomfortable sense of incumbrance, rose like a bird on the wing; his first sense of bewilderment—caused by his rapid transit through space—gave place to an exalted delight as he beheld the wonderful panorama spread out before him—waves of silvery hue, tinged with violet shades—exactly proportioned one with another—like a softly lapping, iridescent sea; long, low slopes clothed in the same subdued color swept by him; he grew weary of the sameness, and wished that he might catch a glimpse of the mountains which should lie beyond those hills; their deep shadows and high lights would be a restful change. Even as the discontent swept over him he plunged into a gulf of shadows—shadows filled with silent voices—desire made manifest without sound or motion—the spiritual understanding of the purely spiritual.