Frank had already begun, and was
consuming a large plateful of porridge and milk with the most prosaic
and healthy appetite. “Slept well?” he asked. “Yes, of course. Where did you learn hypnotism?”

“By the side of the river.”

“You talked an amazing quantity of nonsense last night,” remarked Darcy,
in a voice prickly with reason. “Rather. I felt quite giddy. Look, I remembered to order a dreadful
daily paper for you. You can read about money markets or politics or
cricket matches.”

Darcy looked at him closely. In the morning light Frank looked even
fresher, younger, more vital than he had done the night before, and the
sight of him somehow dinted Darcy’s armour of common-sense. “You are the most extraordinary fellow I ever saw,” he said. “I want to
ask you some more questions.”

“Ask away,” said Frank. *       *       *       *       *

For the next day or two Darcy plied his friend with many questions,
objections and criticisms on the theory of life and gradually got out of
him a coherent and complete account of his experience. In brief then,
Frank believed that “by lying naked,” as he put it, to the force which
controls the passage of the stars, the breaking of a wave, the budding
of a tree, the love of a youth and maiden, he had succeeded in a way
hitherto undreamed of in possessing himself of the essential principle
of life. Day by day, so he thought, he was getting nearer to, and in
closer union with the great power itself which caused all life to be,
the spirit of nature, of force, or the spirit of God. For himself, he
confessed to what others would call paganism; it was sufficient for him
that there existed a principle of life. He did not worship it, he did
not pray to it, he did not praise it. Some of it existed in all human
beings, just as it existed in trees and animals, to realise and make
living to himself the fact that it was all one, was his sole aim and
object. Here perhaps Darcy would put in a word of warning. “Take care,” he said. “To see Pan meant death, did it not.”

Frank’s eyebrows would rise at this. “What does that matter?” he said. “True, the Greeks were always right,
and they said so, but there is another possibility. For the nearer I get
to it, the more living, the more vital and young I become.”

“What then do you expect the final revelation will do for you?”

“I have told you,” said he. “It will make me immortal.”

But it was not so much from speech and argument that Darcy grew to grasp
his friend’s conception, as from the ordinary conduct of his life. They
were passing, for instance, one morning down the village street, when an
old woman, very bent and decrepit, but with an extraordinary
cheerfulness of face, hobbled out from her cottage. Frank instantly
stopped when he saw her. “You old darling! How goes it all?” he said. But she did not answer, her dim old eyes were rivetted on his face; she
seemed to drink in like a thirsty creature the beautiful radiance which
shone there. Suddenly she put her two withered old hands on his
shoulders. “You’re just the sunshine itself,” she said, and he kissed her and
passed on. But scarcely a hundred yards further a strange contradiction of such
tenderness occurred. A child running along the path towards them fell on
its face, and set up a dismal cry of fright and pain. A look of horror
came into Frank’s eyes, and, putting his fingers in his ears, he fled at
full speed down the street, and did not pause till he was out of
hearing. Darcy, having ascertained that the child was not really hurt,
followed him in bewilderment. “Are you without pity then?” he asked. Frank shook his head impatiently. “Can’t you see?” he asked. “Can’t you understand that that sort of
thing, pain, anger, anything unlovely throws me back, retards the coming
of the great hour! Perhaps when it comes I shall be able to piece that
side of life on to the other, on to the true religion of joy. At present
I can’t.”

“But the old woman. Was she not ugly?”

Frank’s radiance gradually returned. “Ah, no. She was like me. She longed for joy, and knew it when she saw
it, the old darling.”

Another question suggested itself. “Then what about Christianity?” asked Darcy. “I can’t accept it. I can’t believe in any creed of which the central
doctrine is that God who is Joy should have had to suffer. Perhaps it
was so; in some inscrutable way I believe it may have been so, but I
don’t understand how it was possible. So I leave it alone; my affair is
joy.”

They had come to the weir above the village, and the thunder of riotous
cool water was heavy in the air. Trees dipped into the translucent
stream with slender trailing branches, and the meadow where they stood
was starred with midsummer blossomings. Larks shot up carolling into the
crystal dome of blue, and a thousand voices of June sang round them. Frank, bare-headed as was his wont, with his coat slung over his arm and
his shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow, stood there like some
beautiful wild animal with eyes half-shut and mouth half-open, drinking
in the scented warmth of the air. Then suddenly he flung himself face
downwards on the grass at the edge of the stream, burying his face in
the daisies and cowslips, and lay stretched there in wide-armed ecstasy,
with his long fingers pressing and stroking the dewy herbs of the field. Never before had Darcy seen him thus fully possessed by his idea; his
caressing fingers, his half-buried face pressed close to the grass, even
the clothed lines of his figure were instinct with a vitality that
somehow was different from that of other men. And some faint glow from
it reached Darcy, some thrill, some vibration from that charged
recumbent body passed to him, and for a moment he understood as he had
not understood before, despite his persistent questions and the candid
answers they received, how real, and how realised by Frank, his idea
was. Then suddenly the muscles in Frank’s neck became stiff and alert, and he
half-raised his head. “The Pan-pipes, the Pan-pipes,” he whispered. “Close, oh, so close.”

Very slowly, as if a sudden movement might interrupt the melody, he
raised himself and leaned on the elbow of his bent arm. His eyes opened
wider, the lower lids drooped as if he focussed his eyes on something
very far away, and the smile on his face broadened and quivered like
sunlight on still water, till the exultance of its happiness was
scarcely human. So he remained motionless and rapt for some minutes,
then the look of listening died from his face, and he bowed his head
satisfied. “Ah, that was good,” he said. “How is it possible you did not hear? Oh,
you poor fellow! Did you really hear nothing?”

A week of this outdoor and stimulating life did wonders in restoring to
Darcy the vigour and health which his weeks of fever had filched from
him, and as his normal activity and higher pressure of vitality
returned, he seemed to himself to fall even more under the spell which
the miracle of Frank’s youth cast over him.