His mind fell on its knees before the mind of the lady of the
feathers. Reason was stricken by instinct. The confused feeling of the
woman had conquered the logical inferences of the man. From that moment
the doctor secretly abandoned the old landmarks which had guided him all
his life, and entered into a new world--a world in which he would not
have dreamed of permitting any of his patients to walk if he could help
it. A strange magic floated round him like a mist blotting out the crude
familiarities of the normal world. The tentroom, with its shadowy tulips,
its scented warmth, its pale twilight, its quick silences when voices
ceased, was a temple of wonder and a home of the miraculous. And those
gathered in it, what were they? Men and a woman? Bodies? Earthly
creatures? No. To his mind they were stripped bare of the clothes in
which man--governed by decrees of some hidden power--must make his life
pilgrimage. They were stripped bare and naked of their bodies. They were
warm, stirring, disembodied things--they were flames leaping, waving,
contending, aspiring. And he remembered the night when he sat alone in
the drawing-room of Valentine, and saw the red walls glow, and the light
deepen, and saw the stillness grow to movement, and the shadows come away
from their background, and take forms--the forms of flames.
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