So she fled. The lark watching from a dew-drenched covert was not more discreet as it turned again to the slumber that she had broken; and when she took the wall the bat that whirled from it made more noise than she did.
At times, when there was neither light nor dark, a world of grey and purple that was thirty feet high and fifteen feet around enclosed her in. And she stretched her ears towards the bounds of that small universe before she ventured another step.
Wonderful and terrifying were these dim oases of vision; and across them, coming from no place and dallying a moment ere they went on to nowhere, more silent than the night itself and as incomprehensible, grey moths were flitting; dim as ghosts they were, and as aloof; beating a tireless gauze on no errand, tacking back and forth, and disappearing in one flirt of a noiseless wing. Small creatures seemed to wait until her foot must fall on them, and then, with a sound that lasted for two long seconds of panic, they were gone; they disappeared, and the world was utterly empty of them. At these sounds she stood, her heart beating up at her throat and a sense of angry despair flooding over and about her. Then she moved again; slipping into and out of shadows as featly as the moonbeam slipped into and out of a cloud.
She knew where she was going, but not what she was going to do. She would see him again because she must, and after that, if there was more to be done the time to do it would bring the doing. But the one large apprehension was as yet sufficient for her mind—that she would see him again, and that they would talk together. She was sure that this time he would speak to her, and that whatever he said would be wiser and sweeter and stranger than any words she had yet listened to; and she wondered, without thought, what his magical utterance would mean and how it could possibly be replied to; knowing yet that her replies were already formed, and that the only word she need utter until she died was the word “yes.”
CHAPTER XVI
She stood again behind a tree, looking on the camp-fire and the three figures that stretched or moved about it. She listened, but now without joy, to the babel of laughter which sped between them. Back and forth it went, endless, tireless. Youth calling and answering to youth; catching a facile fire from each other, and tossing it back as carelessly. Spendthrift they were as young gods; care-free as young animals; with minds untroubled because they need not work, and bodies that were at ease because they were active; scorning the darkness in a gaiety that was delicious because it was thoughtless, and with a thoughtlessness that was lovely because it was young. But, to her, watching, listening, waiting, all that merriment was a torment. She was their peer in youth and activity, but she was their superior in that she was thoughtful, for desire is thought not yet translated, and her desire would swell about the world and banish all else from existence so that she could fashion the regal solitude in which so gigantic a mystery might be contemplated.
Why, she thought frowningly, did these children not go to sleep? And why, she wondered, should older people submit to annoyance or be forced to await any young person’s convenience?
But the night was advanced, and young people will sleep. Soon they stretched about the fire, and each composed himself to the slumber which comes as deliciously in its season as waking does; and, for their life favoured it, they fell into sleep as precipitately as though they were falling down a cliff.
She could scarcely wait for the five minutes that was required. Then she plucked a scrap of moss and tossed it on Naoise’s breast.
As he fell asleep so he sprang awake: he went dead asleep: he came wide awake, with every faculty alert, and his limbs as composed for movement as for rest. He saw the scrap of moss lying on his bosom, and, knowing that such things do not travel of their own accord, he looked for the cause, searching keenly among the boles that stretched in endless gleam and gloom about them.