Not until his dying day will Burrell lose the memory of that march with Necia through the untrodden valley, and yet its incidents were never clear-cut nor distinct when he looked back upon them, but blended into one dreamlike procession, as if he wandered through some calenture where every image was delightfully¹ distorted and each act deliriously³ unreal, yet all the sweeter from its fleeting⁴ unreality. They talked and laughed and sang with a rush of spirits as untamed as the waters in the course they followed. They wandered, hand-in-hand, into a land of illusions, where there was nothing real but love and nothing tangible⁵ but joy. The touch of their lips had waked that delight which comes but once in a lifetime and then to but few; it was like the moon-madness of the tropics or the dementia of the forest folk in spring. A gentle frenzy⁶ possessed⁷ them, rendering⁸ them insensible to fatigue⁹ and causing them to hurry the more breathlessly that they might sooner rest and sit beside each other. At times they fell into sweet silences where the waters laughed with them and the trees whispered their secret, bowing and nodding in joyous¹⁰ surprise at this invasion; or, again, the breezes romped¹¹ with them, withdrawing now and then to rush out and greet them at the bends in boisterous¹² pleasure.