He was Orion, and Orion had at last overtaken the
Pleiades. The fairest of the cluster lay caught within his giant arms.
The Enormous Thing that so long had haunted him with hints of its
approach, rose up from his under-self, and possessed him utterly. And,
oh, the glory of it, the splendour, the intoxication!
In the dim corner where _she_ sat, the firelight scarcely showed her
face, yet every shade of expression that flitted across her features
he saw unobscured. The sparkling, silvery sentences she spoke from
time to time were volumes that interpreted life anew. For years he had
pored over these thick tomes, but heavily and without understanding.
The little things she said now supplied the key. Mind and brain played
no part in this. It was simply that he heard--and knew. He re-
discovered her from their fragments, piece by piece....
The general talk flowed past him in a stream of sound, cut up into
lengths by interrupting consonants, and half ruined by this arbitrary
division; but what _she_ said always seemed the living idea that lay
behind the sound. He could not explain it otherwise. With herself,
and with Riquette, and possibly with little, dreaming Minks, he sat
firmly at the centre of this inner world. The others, even the
children, hovered about its edges, trying to get in.
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