"But I understand you never practise your preaching."
"I am too eager in pursuit. I blunder on the shining thing, and then—" He shrugged his shoulders with infinite regret.
Maud Neville joined her hands behind her head. She frowned the least little bit. She spoke in a hurry.
"No, that's not love. That's anything you like; but it isn't love. Love is quite a different thing. Listen to me. Love is the eye that takes no sleep, the foot that knows no stony road, the heart that bleeds and feels no wound, the brain that always understands."
"I see," King said.
A second time they had nothing to say. As they sat thus, the breeze journeyed again down the valley. It stirred the hessian blinds against the fly-proof netting. It came through the open doorway at the verandah end, and moved the water-bags behind Neville's empty chair. The two opened their arms to it. It must have brought charity to the heart of Mr. Wells, for he packed up his cornet for the night: and it may have touched King's tongue with eloquence. Soon it had gone by. But King got up and walked to the doorway to throw away his dead cigar. He stood there some while looking over the country, and the moonbeams revealed him a stout man, past first youth. Maud Neville fell to examining him. Now the cornet no more made plaint, complete silence waited on the night. Something moved her to break the spell.
"How still it is," she said. "How empty!"
The man at the doorway did not turn round; but he looked out into the open as though proving her words. "Still?" he said. His tongue strings were loosened. "Empty?" He pointed his hand. "Up there, this way, that way, hear the roar of worlds rolling through the crowded ways of space. Hear the bellowings of the furnaces, the shrieks of passage, the crash of collision! Worlds are growing fiery there, worlds are growing cold. Worlds are dying there. Worlds are finding new birth. The Angel of Life and his assistant the Angel of Death take no rest.
"Lift up your veil, O Night, for we would look in.
"Yes, joy is here, and sorrow is here; hunger is here and repletion is here; sin is here and righteousness here: hope and despair, love and hate, anger and forgiveness—all are here.