Paul assented. He was breathing deeply of the sweet humid air, pungent with a thousand fresh scents and the intoxicating fragrance of rain-kissed loam. The sound of greedily drinking plant things arose from the hillside. Beyond the purple heath hung the midnight curtain, embroidered fitfully with silver, and he removed his hat that the cool breeze might touch him. Hatless he was magnificently picturesque; Antinöus spared to maturity; the nature-worshipper within him stirred to quickness by magic perfumes arising from the breast of Mother Earth, he resembled that wonderful statue of the Bithynian which shows him as Dionysus the Twice-born, son of the raincloud, lover of the verdure.
"The world," said Jules Thessaly, "is waiting for you."
Through his abstract Orphic dreams the words reached Paul's mind; and they were oddly familiar. Who had spoken them—now, and once before? He awoke, and remembered. Don had said that the world awaited him. He turned and glanced at his companion. Jules Thessaly was regarding him fixedly.
"You spoke," said Paul. "Pardon my abstraction; but what did you say?"
"I said that when Nature endows a man at once with the genius of Dante and the appearance of a Greek god, that man holds the world in the hollow of his hand. He was born with a purpose. He dares not seek to evade his destiny."
Paul met the glance of the golden, prominent eyes, and it held him enthralled. "I do not seek to evade it," he replied slowly. "I accept it; but I am afraid."
A low-pitched powerful French car stood at the foot of the slope, the chauffeur in his seat and a footman standing beside the open door. Poised ethereally betwixt solid earth and some sphere remote peopled by Greek nature-myths, Paul found himself beside Jules Thessaly, and being borne swiftly, strongly upward to the hills. At the gap beyond the toll-gate, where one may view a prospect unique in all the county, the car stopped, perhaps in obedience to a summons of the master. From the open window Paul looked out over the valley; and a rainbow linked the crescent of the hills, point to point. Backed by the murk of the moving storm, Babylon Hall looked like a giant sarcophagus behind which Titan hands had draped a sable curtain; and it seemed to Paul as he looked, wondering, that the arc of heaven-born colours which no brush may reproduce, rested upon the hidden roof of Dovelands Cottage, crossed Babylon Hall, and swept down to the rain mist of the horizon, down to the distant sea. The palette of the gods began to fade from view, and Paul turned impulsively to his companion.
Jules Thessaly, his elbows resting upon his knees, was staring down, apparently at the flat-crowned black hat which he held in his hands. The car had resumed its smooth progress.
"An omen!" cried Paul. "The world is not past redemption!"
He spoke wildly, emotionally, not choosing his words, scarce knowing what he desired to convey. Jules Thessaly glanced aside at him.