No More Learning

' He rushed in pursuit; something white was moving before
him. He stretched out his hand; it was only a mass of white campion
trembling in the morning breeze, for an ashen morning was just touching
the mists on the eastern mountains. Beginning suddenly to tremble with
supernatural fear Dhoya turned homewards. Everything was changed; dark
shadows seemed to come and go, and elfin chatter to pass upon the
breeze. But when he reached the shelter of the pine woods all was still
as of old. He slackened his speed. Those solemn pine-trees soothed
him with their vast unsociability--many and yet each one alone. Once
or twice, when in some glade further than usual from its kind arose a
pine-tree larger than the rest, he paused with bowed head to mutter an
uncouth prayer to that dark outlaw. As he neared his cave and came from
the deep shade into the region of mountain-ash and hazel, the voices
seemed again to come and go, and the shadows to circle round him, and
once a voice said, he imagined, in accents faint and soft as falling
dew, 'Dhoya, my beloved. ' But a few yards from the cave all grew
suddenly silent.


II

Slower and slower he went, with his eyes on the ground, bewildered
by all that was happening. A few feet from the cave he stood still,
counting aimlessly the round spots of light made by the beams slanting
through trees that hid with their greenness, as in the centre of the
sea, that hollow rock. As over and over he counted them, he heard,
first with the ear only, then with the mind also, a footstep going to
and fro within the cave. Lifting his eyes he saw the same figure seen
on the cliff--the figure of a woman, beautiful and young. Her dress was
white, save for a border of feathers dyed the fatal red of the spirits.
She had arranged in one corner the spears, and in the other the
brushwood and branches used for the fire, and spread upon the ground
the skins, and now began pulling vainly at the great stone pitcher of
the Fomorians.

Suddenly she saw him and with a burst of laughter flung her arms round
his neck, crying, 'Dhoya, I have left my world far off. My people--on
the floor of the lake they are dancing and singing, and on the islands
of the lake; always happy, always young, always without change. I have
left them for thee, Dhoya, for they cannot love. Only the changing,
and moody, and angry, and weary can love. I am beautiful; love me,
Dhoya. Do you hear me? I left the places where they dance, Dhoya, for
thee! ' For long she poured out a tide of words, he answering at first
little, then more and more as she melted away the silence of so many
inarticulate years; and all the while she gazed on him with eyes, no
ardour could rob of the mild and mysterious melancholy that watches us
from the eyes of animals--sign of unhuman reveries.

Many days passed over these strangely-wedded ones. Sometimes when he
asked her, 'Do you love me? ' she would answer, 'I do not know, but
I long for your love endlessly. ' Often at twilight, returning from
hunting, he would find her bending over a stream that flowed near to
the cave, decking her hair with feathers and reddening her lips with
the juice of a wild berry.

He was very happy secluded in that deep forest. Hearing the faint
murmurs of the western sea, they seemed to have outlived change. But
Change is everywhere, with the tides and the stars fastened to her
wheel.