The woman in the carriage looked out with steady tireless eyes upon this visionary land. The breath of the honeysuckle and the pleasant odour of warm hay seemed to give life to the sensuous joy of the wonderful night. She herself was a strange being to be abroad in these quiet lanes. Her only wrap was a long robe of filmy lace, which she had thrown back, so that her shoulders and neck, with its collar of lustrous pearls, were bare to the faint breeze, which only their own progress made. Her gleaming dress of white satin, undecorated, unadorned, fell in delicate lines about her limbs. No wonder that the only person whom they passed, a belated farmer, rubbed his eyes and stared at her as at a ghost!
It seemed to her that something of the confusion of this delightful, half-seen world, had stolen, too, into her thoughts. All day long she had been conscious of it. There was something alien there, something wholly unrecognizable. She felt a new light falling upon her life. From where? She could not tell. Only she knew that its pitiless routine, its littleness, its frantic struggle for the front place in the great pleasure-house, seemed suddenly to stand revealed in pitiful colours. Surely it belonged to some other woman! It could not be she who did those things and called them life. She, who scarcely knew what nerves were, was suddenly afraid. Some change was coming upon her; she felt herself caught in a silent, swift-flowing current. She was being carried away, and she had not strength to resist. And all the time there was an undernote of music. That was what made it so strange. The light that was falling was like summer rain upon the bare, dry places. She was conscious of a new vitality, a new life, and she feared it. Fancy being endowed with a new sense, in the midst of an ordinary work-a-day existence! She felt like that. It was unbelievable, and yet its tumult was stirring in her heart, was rushing through her veins. Often before, her tired eyes had rested unmoved upon a country as beautiful as this, even the mystery of this half light was no new thing. To-night she saw farther--she felt the throbbing, half-mad delight of the wanderer in the enchanted land, the pilgrim who hears suddenly the Angelus bell from the shrine he has journeyed so far to visit. What it meant she could not, she dared not ask herself. She was content to sit there, her eyes wide open now, the tired lines smoothed from her forehead, her face like the face of an eager and beautiful child. No one of her world would have recognized her, as she travelled that night through the perfumed lanes.