they were finished, they heaped up their fire so they would not have to tend it again.
Late, when the moon was above the pines, when the fire glowed in embers and the tree toads were singing, David lay awake from the tumult of his soul. Fidelia was sleeping, lovely, far lovelier as she lay beside him with her throat bare, her hair in loose braids, her arm toward him, far lovelier than ever he had dreamed.
He lay beside her, staring up at the sky, aghast at the teachings which had all but possessed him but which, by this night, he had denied.
"This is what they call the great sin," he repeated to himself, "unless done 'reverently, soberly and in fear of God.'" He laughed quietly at his father's God. "The wonder of love with her!" he exulted. "And to think I'd been taught all my life to fear love and to look upon love for love as low!"
A star shone clearly between the branches of the trees:
"Up from Earth's Center through the Seventh Gate,"
he whispered:
"I rose and on the Throne of Saturn sate;
And many a knot unravelled by the road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
There was the door to which I found no Key;
There was the veil through which I could not see;
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was—"
He turned and gazed at Fidelia's face in the moonlight.
