He shot down like an arrow, in a long palpitant line, and then, two
hundred yards from the sward, opened his wings in an explosion of fluffy
whiteness.

Out of this line he obtained a profound sensation of beauty, of beauty in
simplicity. It was as though he had drawn a long, slender stalk that
opened in a white chalice; as though he had planted a flower, a cosmic
flower, there in the bosom of the sky.

In the evening, after his meal and his pipe, he winged away to a last
adventure which was as a prayer. Leaving the warm glow of his camp-fire,
he soared upward into the violet night. The earth fell away beneath him,
a blue blur, a shadow, till finally the shadow itself whelmed in
nocturnal profundities, and of the earth there remained nothing but the
little fire, the little fire gleaming red in the clearing. He rose. The
night accepted him with silence and solemnity, in a velvety envelopment.
He rose. The stars, at first, were all above him; gradually new cohorts
of them appeared to his right and his left, on all sides; and finally,
his fire, down in the clearing, itself become a star, closed a perfect
sphere. He was the center of a universe of stars; the soft beating of his
wings was as the hushed tolling of their eternities; the rustle of his
wings the crackling of their flames. They moved as he moved; always their
center, he could not approach them. And thus encircled, sometimes
bewildered, he lost his way. He forgot which star was his; seized with
sudden fright, he winged one way and another in mad dashes toward cold
orbs which fled him.

But always, finally remembering, he could find his way merely by folding
his wings.

He folded his wings, and immediately, of all the stars the little winking
red one came rushing to him while the others slid by. It came rushing to
him fiercely, with a sort of jealous and almost ludicrous haste, its face
red with effort. And with it came the earth, a shadow, a fragrance; its
warm, sweet breath fanned his cheek. Spreading largely his wings, he lit
softly upon the meadow-grass, by the little fire, by the cabin, home for
the night.

CHAPTER XI

Man changes. Toward the end of summer, Charles-Norton found himself
insensibly altering the glorious routine of his altitudinous existence.

One day he was tempted by the great plain that lay golden in the West.
Idly, he let himself float down the mountain sides, in long descending
diagonals, and suddenly found himself above a