en glow of splendour, and lo! the pageant is
seemingly at an end. The crowd linger a little, gather a few faded
leaves, and depart; a few--a very few--wait. Now that the throngs have
vanished and the revelry is over, they are conscious of a deep,
pervading quietude; these are days when something touches them with a
sense of near and sacred fellowship; Nature has cast aside her gifts,
and given herself. For there is a something behind the glory of
summer, and they only have entered into real communion with Nature who
have learned to separate her from all her miracles of power and beauty;
who have come to understand that she lives apart from the singing of
birds, the blossoming of flowers, and the waving of branches heavy with
leaves.

The Greeks saw some things clearly without seeing them deeply; they
interpreted through a beautiful mythology all the external phenomena of
Nature. The people of the farther East, on the other hand, saw more
obscurely, but far more deeply; they looked less at the visible things
which Nature held out to them, and more into the mysteries of her
hidden processes, her silent but universal mutations; the subtle
vanishings and reappearings of her presence; they seemed to hear the
mighty loom on which the seasons are woven, to feel through some
primitive but forgotten kinship the throes of the birth-hour, the
vigils of suffering, and the agonies of death. Was there not in such
an attitude toward Nature a hint of the only real fellowship with her?

Chapter II

Under the Apple Boughs

For weeks past I have been conscious of some mystery in the air; there
have been fleeting signs of secret communication between earth and sky,
as if the hidden powers were in friendly league and some great
concerted movement were on foot. There have been soft lights playing
upon the tender grass on the lawn, and caressing those delicate hues
through which each individual tree and shrub searches for its summer
foliage; the mornings have slipped so quietly in through the eastern
gates, and the afternoons have vanished so softly across the western
hills, that one could not but suspect a plot to avert attention and
lull watchful eyes into negligence while all things were made ready for
the moment of revelation. At times a subdued light has filled the
broad arch of heaven, and, later, a fringe of rain has moved gently
across the low hills and fallow fields, rippling like a wave from that
upper sea which ha