"I demand a conjuring-trick," he said, "I know I shan't sleep at all, unless you have some charm for me. Good God, how can I sleep? And, after all, why should I want to? Isn't waking good enough?"
Merivale paused; waking and sleeping seemed to him no more matters for concern than they seem to an animal which sleeps when it is sleepy, and wakes when its sleepiness has gone.
"That is entirely for you to settle," he said. "If you want to sleep I can make you; if you don't, I shall go to sleep myself. I shall do that in any case," he added.
Evelyn was already overwrought with the events of the day, and he spoke petulantly.
"Oh, make me sleep, then!" he said. "There is to-morrow coming. I can do nothing to-night, so let's get it over."
"Lie down, then," said the Hermit, "and look at me, look at my eyes, I mean."
He sat down on the edge of Evelyn's bed, and spoke low and slow.
"The wind is asleep," he said, "it sleeps among the trees of the forest, for the time of sleep has come, and everything sleeps, your love sleeps too. Lie still;" he said, as Evelyn moved, "the trees of the forest sleep; and their leaves sleep, and high in the branches the birds sleep. Everything sleeps, the tired even and the weary sleep, and those who are strong sleep, and those who are weak."
Evelyn's eyelids quivered, shut a moment, then half-opened again.
"The flowers sleep," said Merivale, "and the eyelids of their petals are closed, as your eyelids are closing. Sleep, the black soft wing, has shut over them, as the wings of birds shut over their heads. The earth sleeps, the very stones of her sleep; she will not stir till morning, or if she stirs it will be but to sleep again. The sad and the happy sleep, the very sea sleeps and is hushed, and the tides of the sea are asleep. Sleep, too," he said, slightly raising his voice, "sleep till they wake--sleep till I wake you."
He waited a moment, but Evelyn's eyelids did not even quiver again. Then he blew out the light and left the room.
Merivale stepped softly down the stairs, and went out on to the verandah, where they had dined a few hours before. At the touch of the soft night-air all the trouble that during this evening had been his was evaporated and vanished. The sum of his consciousness was contained in the bracket, that he was alive, and that he was part of life. It was like stepping into an ocean that received him and bore him on its surface, or took him to its depths; which mattered not at all--the thing embraced and encompassed him. He went back again to it from the fretful trivialities that had arrested him as the midge on his wrist could for the moment arrest him, trivially and momentarily causing him some infinitesimal annoyance. But that was over; the huge sky was above him, the world was asleep, and was his possession. It--the material part of it--was but a dream, the spirit of it all suffused him. There was life everywhere, life in its myriad forms, its myriad beauties. The sleepy voice of the river was part of him, the moon was he, the utmost twinkle of a star was he also. Yet no less the smallest blade of grass was he; there was no atom of the universe with which he did not claim identity.