ibed in the tone of a man awakening from a deep sleep.
There was a confidence in what he said and the way he said it that
mayhap terrified the hovering spirits of the evening, though it did not
fill Dorothea's eyes, then glistening like polished metal, with a more
intimate or cordial light.

When he looked up he felt he saw two sombre figures standing on the edge
of the forest; he felt he saw the two sisters, and that they were
casting mournful, reproachful glances at him.

He got up. "And all that," he concluded, "all that has been drunk up,
like rain by the parched earth, by a work on which I have been labouring
for the past seven years. For seven years. Two more years, and I will
give it to the world, provided this unsteady globe has not fallen into
the sun by that time."

Dorothea had a confused, haphazard idea as to the type of man that was
standing before her. She was seized with a prickling desire for him such
as she had thus far never experienced. She began to love him, in her
way. Something impelled her to seek shelter by him, near him, somewhat
as a bird flies under the crown of a tree at the approach of a storm.
Daniel interpreted the timidity with which she put her arm in his as a
sign of gratitude.

And in this mood he took her back to the city.

XV

It was in this pulsing, urging, joyful mood that Daniel worked at and
completed the fifth movement of his symphony, a _scherzo_ of grand
proportions, beginning with a clarinet figure that symbolised laughing
_sans-souci_. All the possibilities of joy developed from this simple
motif. Nor was retrospection or consolation lacking. If the main themes,
mindful of their former pre-eminence, seemed inclined to widen the bed
of their stream, they were appeased and forced back into their original
channel by artistic and capriciously alternating means. Once all three
themes flowed along together, gaining strength apparently through their
union, rose to a wonderful fugue, and seemed to be just on the point of
gaining the victory when the whole orchestra, above the chord in D
sevenths, was seized by the waltz melody, those melancholy
sister-strains were taken up by the violins, and fled, dirge-like, to
their unknown abodes. Just before the jubilant crescendo of the finale,
a bassoon solo held one of them fast on its distant, grief-stricken
heights.

Daniel sketched the sixth movement in the following fourteen nights.

He was f