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Then, from a loggia above the central portico, a woman's clear contralto notes took flight: Before the yellow dawn is up, With pomp of shield and shaft, Drink we of Night's fast-ebbing cup One last delicious draught. The shadowy wine of Night is sweet, With subtle slumbrous fumes Crushed by the Hours' melodious feet From bloodless elder-blooms...
"These mountains!" She threw wide her arms and drew a long, ecstatic breath. She came near to him and touched his arm. "I hated them once, I love them now." She smiled up at him, her darkly slumbrous, scarlet-lipped smile. He leaned toward her as if to clasp her close, but the vows he had sworn to himself a thousand times since she had been in his cabin alone with him still held him.
And this throng of Eastern men, with dark, keen, shining eyes, with heavy, slumbrous eyes, with eyes glittering with the yellow fires of greed; this throng, yellow-skinned, brown-skinned, black-skinned, with thin, expressive hands, with henna-tinted nails, with narrow, cunning wrists; this throng that talked volubly, that gesticulated, that gazed, observing without self-consciousness, summing up without pity, whose eyes took all and gave nothing if he stepped out of the carriage, if he forsook the borrowed comforts and the borrowed delights of Europe, if he hid himself in this throng, would he not find himself for the first time?
I could hear it, in my slumbrous lassitude, struggling and gurgling at the tied rudder, and making wet sloppy noises under the sheer of the poop; and I was aware that the Speranza was gliding along pretty fast, drawn into that procession, probably at the rate of four to six knots: but I did not care, knowing very well that no land was within two hundred miles of my bows, for I was in longitude 173°, in the latitude of Fiji and the Society Islands, between those two: and after a time the cigar drooped and dropped from my mouth, and sleep overcame me, and I slept there, in the lap of the Infinite.
There was a great checkering of light and darkness and the slumbrous sound of water. The path grew steeper and rougher. He was approaching the middle of the place. At last he came to the cave mouth and the leafless briers that curtained it. Just before it was reached, the moonbeams struck through clear air. There was a silver lightness. A form moved from where it had rested against the rock.
'Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air. My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just to nod and open my eyes.
The air at this height was clear and strong as wine, the noon sunshine bright, not hot, the murmur in the leaves and the sound of Thunder Run rather crisp and gay than slumbrous. "If it had to come," said Tom, "why couldn't it ha' come when I was younger? If 't weren't for that darned fall out o' Nofsinger's hayloft I'd go, anyhow!"
His whole sight, his whole soul were concentrated on the white recumbent statue with the autumn-gold hair, which was couched in front of him, strewn with flowers. That was Lotys or rather, that had been Lotys! It was now a very beautiful, still, smiling Thing, its eyes were shut, but the eyelashes lay delicately on the pallid cheeks like little fringes of dark gold, tenderly slumbrous.
Sisily saw a blue sky, sunlight like burnished silver, green fields and clear pools in which everything was reflected ... a slumbrous perfect day, with drowsy cattle knee-deep in grass, bees, and floating butterflies, and the shrill notes of happy birds. Once more the tangled loom of her fevered brain wove a new picture.
The stars were paling rapidly; the first glint of the new day was in the air, the world lay shadowy and silent and lifeless, softened in the seeming, but, as in the daytime, slumbrous under an atmosphere of brooding mystery. "When you told me last night . . . when you put your rope around me and said that I might fall half a dozen feet. . . ."
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