Even when the wildest abandon approached the heat of orgy,
when the recklessness appeared excess--there hid that marvellous touch
of loveliness which makes the natural sacred. There was coherence,
purpose, the fulfilling of an exquisite law: there was worship. The
form it took, haply, was strange as well as riotous, yet in its
strangeness dreamed innocence and purity, and in its very riot flamed
that spirit which is divine. For he found himself at length beside her once again; breathless and
panting, her sweet brown limbs aglow from the excitement of escape
denied; eyes shining like a blaze of stars, and pulses beating with
tumultuous life--helpless and yielding against the strength that pinned
her down between the roots. His eyes put mastery on her own. She looked
up into his face, obedient, happy, soft with love, surrendered with the
same delicious abandon that had swept her for a moment into other arms. "You caught me in the end," she sighed. "I only played awhile." "I hold you for ever," he replied, half wondering at the rough power in
his voice. It was here the hush of worship stole upon her little face, into her
obedient eyes, about her parted lips. She ceased her wilful struggling. "Listen!" she whispered. "I hear a step upon the glades beyond. The
iris and the lily open; the earth is ready, waiting; we must be ready
too! _He_ is coming!" He released her and sprang up; the entire company rose too. All stood,
all bowed the head. There was an instant's subtle panic, but it was
the panic of reverent awe that preludes a descent of deity. For a wind
passed through the branches with a sound that is the oldest in the
world and so the youngest. Above it there rose the shrill, faint piping
of a little reed. Only the first, true sounds were audible--wind and
water--the tinkling of the dewdrops as they fell, the murmur of the
trees against the air. This was the piping that they heard. And in the
hush the stars bent down to hear, the riot paused, the orgy passed and
died. The figures waited, kneeling then with one accord. They listened
with--the Earth. "He comes.... He comes ..." the valley breathed about them. There was a footfall from far away, treading across a world unruined
and unstained. It fell with the wind and water, sweetening the valley
into life as it approached. Across the rivers and forests it came
gently, tenderly, but swiftly and with a power that knew majesty. "He comes.... He comes...!" rose with the murmur of the wind and
water from the host of lowered heads. The footfall came nearer, treading a world grown soft with worship. It reached the grove. It entered. There was a sense of intolerable
loveliness, of brimming life, of rapture. The thousand faces lifted
like a cloud. They heard the piping close. And so He came. But He came with blessing. With the stupendous Presence there was joy,
the joy of abundant, natural life, pure as the sunlight and the wind. He passed among them. There was great movement--as of a forest shaking,
as of deep water falling, as of a cornfield swaying to the wind, yet
gentle as of a harebell shedding its burden of dew that it has held
too long because of love. He passed among them, touching every head. The great hand swept with tenderness each face, lingered a moment on
each beating heart. There was sweetness, peace, and loveliness; but
above all, there was--life. He sanctioned every natural joy in them and
blessed each passion with his power of creation.... Yet each one saw
him differently: some as a wife or maiden desired with fire, some as
a youth or stalwart husband, others as a figure veiled with stars or
cloaked in luminous mist, hardly attainable; others, again--the fewest
these, not more than two or three--as that mysterious wonder which
tempts the heart away from known familiar sweetness into a wilderness
of undecipherable magic without flesh and blood....

To two, in particular, He came so near that they could feel his breath
of hills and fields upon their eyes. He touched them with both mighty
hands. He stroked the marble breasts, He felt the little hidden horns
... and, as they bent lower so that their lips met together for an
instant, He took her arms and twined them about the curved, brown neck
that she might hold him closer still....

Again a footfall sounded far away upon an unruined world ... and He was
gone--back into the wind and water whence He came. The thousand faces
lifted; all stood up; the hush of worship still among them. There was a
quiet as of the dawn. The piping floated over woods and fields, fading
into silence. All looked at one another.... And then once more the
laughter and the play broke loose. 4

"We'll go," she cried, "and peep upon that other world where life
hangs like a prison on their eyes!" And, in a moment, they were across
the soaking grass, the lawn and flower-beds, and close to the walls
of the heavy mansion. He peered in through a window, lifting her up
to peer in with him. He recognised the world to which outwardly he
belonged; he understood; a little gasp escaped him; and a slight shiver
ran down the girl's body into his own. She turned her eyes away. "See,"
she murmured in his ear, "it's ugly, it's not natural. They feel guilty
and ashamed. There is no innocence!" She saw the men; it was the women
that he saw chiefly. Lolling ungracefully, with a kind of boldness that asserted
independence, the women smoked their cigarettes with an air of
invitation they sought to conceal and yet showed plainly. He saw
his familiar world in nakedness. Their backs were bare, for all the
elaborate clothes they wore; they hung their breasts uncleanly; in
their eyes shone light that had never known the open sun. Hoping they
were alluring and desirable, they feigned a guilty ignorance of that
hope. They all pretended. Instead of wind and dew upon their hair, he
saw flowers grown artificially to ape wild beauty, tresses without
lustre borrowed from the slums of city factories. He watched them
manoeuvring with the men; heard dark sentences; caught gestures half
delivered whose meaning should just convey that glimpse of guilt they
deemed to increase pleasure. The women were calculating, but nowhere
glad; the men experienced, but nowhere joyous. Pretended innocence lay
cloaked with a veil of something that whispered secretly, clandestine,
ashamed, yet with a brazen air that laid mockery instead of sunshine in
their smiles. Vice masqueraded in the ugly shape of pleasure; beauty
was degraded into calculated tricks. They were not natural. They knew
not joy. "The forward ones, the civilised!" she laughed in his ear, tweaking his
horns with energy. "_We_ are the backward!" "Unclean," he muttered, recalling a catchword of the world he gazed
upon. They were the civilised! They were refined and educated--advanced.