He swayed, spread wide his arms, clutching the air.
Slowly he bent backwards, fell prostrate upon his back on the hillside,
and then lay motionless.
* * * * *
His body, motionless midst the rush of the thunderstorm, lay like an
uprooted trunk, among the straining gorse and the waving grass. His soul
must have been sealed by the central contact with the Being without time
and without space, for when Benedetto first regained consciousness he
had lost all sense of place and of time. His limbs felt strangely light;
he experienced a pleasant sensation of physical exhaustion, and his
heart was flooded with infinite sweetness. First upon his face, then
upon his hands, he felt innumerable slight touches, as though loving,
animate atoms of the air were gently tickling him; he heard a faint
murmur of timid voices round what seemed to be his bed. He sat up and
looked about him, dazed, but at peace; forgetful of the where and the
when, but perfectly at peace and filled with content by the quiet, inner
spring of vague love, which flowed through all his being, and overflowed
upon surrounding things, upon the sweet little lives about him, that
thus came to love him in turn.
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