Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow
and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There was
a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted
something fresh and cool.
Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air
was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not
clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked out
on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was shining
duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in
the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited breathlessly
to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning jumped up into
the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird stirring
restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner, greyer. The
lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the arm of day,
moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself, flickered
its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. Siegmund watched
it with wonder and delight.
The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor moon
would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the balcony
to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon,
crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly over to the
western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the sun would
laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing with its
prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making its last
run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing to itself
as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however, leaped low
off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. Siegmund no
longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the
disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white lightning
gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the
mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even in the west
they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned, rising
higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold across the
moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink butterflies had
gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies in the fens. As
a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff after puff filling
with whiteness the space which had been the night. Siegmund sat watching
the last morning blowing in across the mown darkness, till the whole
field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like a dead mouse
which floats on water.