They go to and fro without fixed habitation: or dwell in men's houses"-- Just then a companion's hand laid in the darkness on the shoulder of the speaker carried him away, and the discourse broke off suddenly.

Its singular intimations, however, were sufficient to throw back on this strange evening, in all its detail--the dance, the readings, the distant fire--a kind of allegoric expression: gave it the character of one of those famous Platonic figures or apologues which had then been in fact under discussion.

When Marius recalled its circumstances he seemed to hear once more that voice of genuine conviction, pleading, from amidst a [90] scene at best of elegant frivolity, for so boldly mystical a view of man and his position in the world.

For a moment, but only for a moment, as he listened, the trees had seemed, as of old, to be growing "close against the sky." Yes! the reception of theory, of hypothesis, of beliefs, did depend a great deal on temperament.

They were, so to speak, mere equivalents of temperament.