nd died. You never feel lonely when you have the stars; yet
they do not pry upon you. You can hide nothing from them, and need not
seek to hide. If they have foreknowledge, they nurse no after-thought.

Now, to-night, as I looked and wondered at their beauty, I became
aware of a phenomenon untold before. Yet so quietly did it come, and
so naturally, that it gave me no disturbance, nor forced itself upon
me. A luminous ring, a ring of pale fire, in shape a long, narrow, and
fluctuating oval, became discernible in the sky south of my
stand-point, midway (I thought) between me and the south.

It was diaphanous, or diaphanous to strong light behind it. At one
time I saw the great beacon of the south-west (Saturn, I think)
burning through it; not within the ring, but from behind the litten
vapour of which the ring was made. Lesser fires than his were put out
by it. It varied very much in shape as it spread or drew out, as a
smoker's blue rings are varied by puffs of wind. Now it was a perfect
round, now so long as to be less a hoop than a fine oblong. Sometimes
it was pear-shaped, sometimes amorphous; bulbous here, hollow there.
And there seemed movement; I thought now and again that it was spiral
as well as circular, that it might, under some stress of speed,
writhe upward like dust in a whirlwind. It wavered, certainly, in
elevation, lifting, sinking, wafted one way or another with the ease
of a cloud of gnats. It was extraordinarily beautiful and exciting. I
watched it for an hour.

At times I seemed to be conscious of more than appearance. I cannot
speak more definitely than that. Music was assuredly in my head, very
shrill, piercing, continuous music. No air, no melody, but the
expectancy of an air, preparation for it, a prelude to melodious
issues. You may say the overture to some vast aerial symphony; I know
not what else to call it. I was never more than alive to it, never
certain of it. It was as furtive, secret, and tremulous as the dawn
itself. Now, just as under that shivering and tentative opening of
great music you are conscious of the fierce energy of violins, so was
I aware, in this surmise of music, of wild forces which made it. I
thought not of voices but of wings. I was sure that this ring of flame
whirled as well as floated in the air; the motion and the sound, alike
indecipherable, were one and the same to me.

I watched it, I say, for an hour: it may have been for two hours.
By-and-by it came nearer