St. George was off for a few steps, trampling impatiently over the coarse grass of the bank. Somewhere in that dim valley--was she there, was she there? Was she in trouble, did she need him, did she think of him? St. George went through the ancient, delicious list as conscientiously as if he were the first lover, and she were the first princess, and this were the first ascent of Yaque that the world had ever known. For by some way of miracle, the mystery of the island was suddenly to him the very mystery of his love, and the two so filled his heart that he could not have told of which he was thinking. That which had lain, shadowy and delicious, in his soul these many days--not so very many, either, if one counts the suns--was become not only a thing of his soul but a thing of the outside world, almost of the visible world, something that had existed for ever and which he had just found out; and here, wrapped in nameless light, lay its perfect expression. When a shaft of silver smote the long grass at his feet, and the edge of the moon rose above the mountain, St. George turned with a poignant exultation--did a mere victory over half a continent ever make a man feel like that?--and strode back to the others.
"Come on," he called ringingly in a voice that did everything but confess in words that something heavenly sweet was in the man's mind, "let's be off!"
Amory was carefully lighting his pipe.
"I feel sort of tense," he explained, "as if the whole place would explode if I threw down my match. What do you think of it?"
St. George did not answer.
"It's a place where all the lines lead up," he was saying to himself, "as they do in a cathedral."
The four went the fragrant way that led to the heart of the island. First the path followed the high bank the branches of whose tropical undergrowth brushed their faces with brief gift of perfume. On the other side was a wood of slim trunks, all depths of shadow and delicacies of borrowed light in little pools. Everywhere, everywhere was a chorus of slight voices, from bark and air and secret moss, singing no forced notes of monotone, but piping a true song of the gladness of earth, plaintive, sweet, indescribably harmonious. It came to St. George that this was the way the woods at night would always sound if, somehow, one were able to hear the sweetness that poured itself out. Even that familiar sense in the night-woods that something is about to happen was deliciously present with him; and though Amory went on quietly enough, St. George swam down that green way, much as one dreams of floating along a street, above-heads.