His most urgent physic
need was that of air. He strode to the window-door leading out to the
terraced lawn, and, throwing it open, passed out into the darkness.
There was no mist at this height above the Charles. The night was still,
and the moon westering. The light had a glimmering, metallic essence, as
from a cosmic mirror in the firmament. Long shadows of trees and
shrubbery lay across the grass. Clear in the moonlit foreground stood an
elm, the pride of Tory Hill--springing as a single shaft for twice the
measure of a man--springing and spreading there into four giant
branches, each of which sprang and spread higher into eight--so
springing and spreading, springing and spreading still--rounded,
symmetrical, superb--till the long outermost shoots fell pendulous, like
spray from a fountain of verdure. The silence held the suggestion of
mighty spiritual things astir. At least the heaven was not of brass, if
the earth continued to be of adamant. On the contrary, the sky was high,
soft, dim, star-bestrewn, ineffable. It was spacious; it was free; it
was the home of glorious things; it was the medium of the eternal.
He was not reassured; he was not even comforted; what relief he got came
only from a feeling--a fancy, perhaps--that the weight had been eased,
that he was freed for a minute from the crushing pressure of the
inevitable.
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