banishing night, and hiding the stars from the cold contemplation of the astronomer. It was the sudden rebound of a tall young palm which had been bent to the earth with thongs. It was a storm of burning sand, effacing alike the road before and behind. It was the cleaving by an earthquake of the solid ground, swallowing up in a moment man's handiwork for ages. It was the tree which blossomed once in a thousand years, the first flight of a bird released from captivity, the first living prey of the young lion.
Then after he had exhausted language and imagination in portraying the degree and violence of his passion, the natural bent of his mind made him seek for an explanation which would make the unreasonable reasonable, and the ludicrous full of dignity and pathos. He proved to Daphne that life is not truly in the individual but in the race; his race was a giant
