So Senhouse, in his hopeless plight, starved and did well;
dreams nourished him in what passes in England for solitude. From the grey
of the mornings to the violet-lidded dusk his silence was rarely broken;
and yet the music in his heart was continuous; his routine marched to a
rhythm. The real presence of Sanchia was always with him, to intensify,
accentuate, and make reasonable the perceptions of his quickened senses.
Sense blended with sense--as when the sharp fragrance of the thyme which
his feet crushed gave him the vision of her immortal beauty, or when, in
the rustle of the wind-swept grasses, he had a consciousness of her
thrilled heart beating near by. All nature, in fact, was vocal of Sanchia
by day; and at night, presently, she stole white-footed down the slant
rays of the moon and fed his soul upon exhalations of her own. Idle as he
might have appeared to one who did not know the man--for beyond the
routine of his handiwork he did nothing visible--he was really intensely
busy. Out of the stores reaped and garnered in those meditative years was
to come the substance of his after-life.
But no man in England may live three years in a grass valley unreported;
his fame will spread abroad, scattered as birds sow seeds.
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