His brain was busy; and half unconsciously his thoughts spoke aloud in words-- "Have we come to the former old stopping place ?" he said, as though questioning some invisible companion; "Must we cry 'halt!' for the thousand millionth time?
Or can we go on?
Dare we go on?
If actually we discover the secret--wrapped up like the minutest speck of a kernel in the nut of an electron,--what then?
Will it be well or ill?
Shall we find it worth while to live on here with nothing to do ?--nothing to trouble us or compel us to labour?
Without pain shall we be conscious of health ?--without sorrow shall we understand joy ?" A sudden whiteness flooded the dark landscape, and a full moon leaped to the edge of the receding cloud.

Its rising had been veiled in the drift of black woolly vapour, and its silver glare, sweeping through the darkness flashed over the land with astonishing abruptness.

The man lifted his eyes.
"One would think that done for effect!" he said, half aloud--"If the moon were the goddess Cynthia beloved of Endymion, as woman and goddess in an impulse of vanity she would certainly have done that for effect! As it is--" Here he paused,--an instinctive feeling warned him that some one was looking at him, and he turned his head quickly.

On the slope of the hill where Manella had lately stood, there was a figure, white as the white moonlight itself, outlined delicately against the dark background.

It seemed to be poised on the earth like a bird just lightly descended; in the stirless air its garments appeared closed about it fold on fold like the petals of an unopened magnolia flower.
As he looked, it came gliding towards him with the floating ease of an air bubble, and the strong radiance of the large moon showed its woman's face, pale with the moonbeam pallor, and set in a wave of hair that swept back from the brows and fell in a loosely twisted coil like a shining snake stealthily losing itself in folds of misty drapery.