The entire range of Henriot’s experience, read, imagined, dreamed, then fainted into unreality before the sheer wonder of what he saw.  In the brief interval it takes to snap the fingers the climax was thus so hurriedly upon him.  And, through it all, he was clearly aware of the pair of little human figures, man and woman, standing erect and commanding at the centre—­knew, too, that she directed and controlled, while he in some secondary fashion supported her—­and ever watched.  But both were dim, dropped somewhere into a lesser scale.  It was the knowledge of their presence, however, that alone enabled him to keep his powers in hand at all.  But for these two human beings there within possible reach, he must have closed his eyes and swooned.

For a tempest that seemed to toss loose stars about the sky swept round about him, pouring up the pillared avenue in front of the procession.  A blast of giant energy, of liberty, came through.  Forwards and backwards, circling spirally about him like a whirlwind, came this revival of Life that sought to dip itself once more in matter and in form.  It came to the accurate out-line of its form they had traced for it.  He held his mind steady enough to realise that it was akin to what men call a “descent” of some “spiritual movement” that wakens a body of believers into faith—­a race, an entire nation; only that he experienced it in this brief, concentrated form before it has scattered down into ten thousand hearts.  Here he knew its source and essence, behind the veil.  Crudely, unmanageable as yet, he felt it, rushing loose behind appearances.  There was this amazing impact of a twisting, swinging force that stormed down as though it would bend and coil the very ribs of the old stubborn hills.  It sought to warm them with the stress of its own irresistible life-stream, to beat them into shape, and make pliable their obstinate resistance.  Through all things the impulse poured and spread, like fire at white heat.

Yet nothing visible came as yet, no alteration in the actual landscape, no sign of change in things familiar to his eyes, while impetus thus fought against inertia.  He perceived nothing form-al.  Calm and untouched himself, he lay outside the circle of evocation, watching, waiting, scarcely daring to breathe, yet well aware that any minute the scene would transfer itself from memory that was subjective to matter that was objective.

And then, in a flash, the bridge was built, and the transfer was accomplished.  How or where he did not see, he could not tell.  It was there before he knew it—­there before his normal, earthly sight.  He saw it, as he saw the hands he was holding stupidly up to shield his face.  For this terrific release of force long held back, long stored up, latent for centuries, came pouring down the empty Wadi bed prepared for its reception.  Through stones and sand and boulders it came in an impetuous hurricane of power.  The liberation of its life appalled him.  All that was free, untied, responded instantly like chaff; loose objects fled towards it; there was a yielding in the hills and precipices; and even in the mass of Desert which provided their foundation.  The hinges of the Sand went creaking in the night.  It shaped for itself a bodily outline.