"A curious dream of white birds came to him there; the dream had come to him before, yet not with clearness--and in the dream was a dusk path in an ancient wood, and a well there--a well rising and sinking with the tide, and a vision of a maid moving before him into the shadows--a vision swathed in a white cloud, with hidden face but a voice in which was held all the music of beauty of life in all the world. His soul was as a harp on which that music played, and his body was but as a shell left behind while the wings of harmony lifted him--lifted until he was borne as a cloud far from the touch of the earth--and he heard a word over and over in his ear, until he strove with might to echo it, and then, in the striving, the smell of the heather was again in his nostrils, and the forefeet of the white hound were on his breast, and above him a star shone in the soft rose of the sky."