of creation marked the mere creation of
light out of darkness. The vestment itself would alone have suggested
the symbol; and Syme felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure white
and black expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with his
inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily make
war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme was
scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality of
their new surroundings, this man's eyes were still stern. No smell
of ale or orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a reasonable
question.

If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he,
too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if the
Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the original and formless
light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light
in special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may
sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him
the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the
sun and moon.

As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook Ratcliffe,
who was clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the pattern upon whose
garment was a green tangle of trees. For he stood for that third day
on which the earth and green things were made, and his square, sensible
face, with its not unfriendly cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it.

They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very large
old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken light
of which a vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. Syme
seemed to see every shape in Nature imitated in some crazy costume.
There was a man dressed as a windmill with enormous sails, a man dressed
as an elephant, a man dressed as a balloon; the two last, together,
seemed to keep the thread of their farcical adventures. Syme even saw,
with a queer thrill, one dancer dressed like an enormous hornbill, with
a beak twice as big as himself--the queer bird which had fixed itself on
his fancy like a living question while he was rushing down the long road
at the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand other such objects,
however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple tree, a dancing
ship. One would have thought that the untamable tune of some mad
musician had set all the common objects of field and street