leave that with him, while he slept, as compensation for the pain.
Oh, the caressing softness of the dust! For this last little way he would have nothing between his soles and it. He threw off his shoes and ran barefoot. He threw back his head, drinking in the cleanness of the breeze from the lake. Now he ran over dry, coarse grass, now over shingle that cut his feet, now over fine sand, hard as a marble floor.
The sun was hanging, a great lantern, just above the horizon. A red pathway crossed the lake from it to his very feet. The morning was as pure, as crystalline, as though it was the first morning that had broken over the earth. As he ran splashing into the water, fiery drops were flung up all about him. Translucent ripples disturbed the glassy surface of the lake. He ran out, his bare head empty and untroubled. He was not afraid. He sank into the water and swam outward on his side, following the red pathway. He would swim till he was tired, and then . . . He embraced the gently heaving water. He flung his arm again and again across the early morning ruddiness. He closed his eyes and saw bright panels set in amethyst walls against the lids. . . . There was no thought in him; he was empty as a crystal bowl moving through the water; feeling neither pride nor shame, exquisitely unconcerned; fragile, yet capable of receiving and holding fast the beauty that was flowing with him. . . . He heard music. . . .
Slowly he relaxed, and surrendered himself. . . .
The music became by degrees blurred, resolving itself into an overpowering humming, as though the arch of the sky were the dome of a vast beehive. His ears ached with the burden of it. He longed, with a sad longing, to be free of the fantastic, terrible droning, to hear the music, pure and clear once more. . . . It was no longer morning, red sunrise, but night, black night, and all the stars were bees, filling the universe with their humming. They swarmed in the cold black heavens, hungry for honey, ceaselessly humming. . . .
