"I feel sort of tense," he explained, "as if the whole place would
explode if I threw down my match. What do you think of it?"
St. George did not answer.
"It's a place where all the lines lead up," he was saying to
himself, "as they do in a cathedral."
The four went the fragrant way that led to the heart of the island.
First the path followed the high bank the branches of whose tropical
undergrowth brushed their faces with brief gift of perfume. On the
other side was a wood of slim trunks, all depths of shadow and
delicacies of borrowed light in little pools. Everywhere, everywhere
was a chorus of slight voices, from bark and air and secret moss,
singing no forced notes of monotone, but piping a true song of the
gladness of earth, plaintive, sweet, indescribably harmonious. It
came to St. George that this was the way the woods at night would
always sound if, somehow, one were able to hear the sweetness that
poured itself out. Even that familiar sense in the night-woods that
something is about to happen was deliciously present with him; and
though Amory went on quietly enough, St.
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