midst of the black pines! If he left his wheel here, he might go to the birch wood and see it in this first silvery night of June; take a picture of it back to his room in his mind's eye.
His "mind's eye." What a singular phrase! He thought of his mind's eye—round, glowing, rapturous and frightened by turns.
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
It must have been the eye of his heart which he had been imagining—that flaming, rapturous, terrified eye. "When love is done—" Love had not begun for him. He thought it never would. Not that kind of love. He was not at all sure that he wanted it.
He was running lightly along the woodland path that wound among the pines. There were before him five slender young birches, sprung from the trunk of a fallen and decayed pine, like five fabled virgins from the torso of a slain giant. Beyond them the birch wood lay in the mystery of moonlight, the delicate, drooping boughs seemed to float above the immaculate boles.
This was the spot where one morning he had seen Renny standing with a strange woman in his arms. The place had ever since been haunted by that vision. He was therefore scarcely surprised when he heard low voices as he reached the outer fringe of trees. Was Renny up to his love games again? He halted among the young ferns and listened. He peered through the strange misty radiance that seemed to be distilled from the trunks and foliage of the birches themselves rather than to fall from above, and tried to see who were the two who had sought this hidden spot. Every nerve in his body was quivering, taut as the strings of a musical instrument.
