s of the sun, sometimes of evening, sometimes of night; and I
would at least save you from the fate that has made my poor friend a
phantom before he is a shade."

XII

_The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie._

--S.T. Coleridge.

So Reverie, as he had promised, rode out with me a few miles to see me
on my way. Above the gloom and stillness of the valley the scene began
to change again. I was glad as I could be to view once more the
tossing cornfields and the wind at play with shadow. Near and far,
woods and pastures smoked beneath the sun. I know not through how many
arches of the elms and green folds of the meadows I kept watch on the
chimneys of a farmhouse above its trees.

But Reverie, the further we journeyed, the less he said. I almost
chafed to see his heedless eyes turned upon some inward dream, while
here, like life itself, stood cloud and oak, warbled bird and brook
beneath the burning sun. I saw again in memory the silver twilight of
the moon, and the crazy face of Love's Warrior, haunter of shade. Let
him but venture into the open, I thought, hear again the distant
lowing of the oxen, the rooks cawing in the elms, see again the flocks
upon the hillside!

I suppose this was her home my heart had turned to. This was my dust;
night's was his. For me the wild rose and the fields of harvest; for
him closed petals, the chantry of the night wind, phantom lutes and
voices. And, as if he had overheard my thoughts, Reverie turned at the
cross-ways.

"You will come back again," he said. "They tell me in distant lands
men worship Time, set up a shrine to him in every street, and treasure
his emblem next their hearts. There, they say, even the lover babbles
of hours, and the dreamer measures sleep with a pendulum. Well, my
house is secluded, and the world is far; and to me Time is naught.
Return, sir, then, when it pleases you. Besides," he added, smiling
faintly, "there is always company at the World's End."

The crisp sunbeams rained upon his pale and delicate horse, its
equal-plaited mane, on the darkness of his cloak, that dream-delighted
face. Here smouldered gold, here flushed crimson, and here the curved
damaskening of his bridle glistened and gleamed. He was a strange
visitant to the open day, between the green hedges, beneath the
enormous branching of the elms. And there I bade him farewell.

Some day, perhaps, I shall return as he has foretold, for it is ever
easy