which led to the trout-stream.

His mind was drowsy with a thousand half-formed ideas that lazily lay
in the pan of his brain waiting the reveille of thought. A skylark
twitted earth's creatures from its aerial height. A cow, munching in
endless meditation on its unfretful existence, emitted a philosophic
moo.

Selwyn smiled, and let his mind wander listlessly through the fields of
his impressions. He thought of Britain, and wondered what there is in
the magic of that little island that fastens on one's heart-strings
even while the brain is pounding insistent criticism. For the first
time the insidious beauty of Roselawn's tranquillity was cloying the
energy of his mind--a mind that never gave him rest, but was always
questioning and seeking the truth in every phase of human endeavour.
The peacefulness of the twilight hour was lulling his mental faculties,
and the perfumes of summer's zenith were stirring his senses like music
of the Nile.

As though he were picturing inhabitants of another world, he conjured
to his vision the feverish traffic of New York, deluged with human
beings belched from their million occupations into the glare of
lunch-hour. It gave him a strange sensation of being among the gods to
be able to look at the lowering sun and know that at the same moment it
held New York in the pitiless heat of midday. . . . And he wondered
dreamily why people lived such a mockery of existence as in its
towering streets. The pastoral atmosphere was so perfect, so
completely soothing in its cool fragrance of evening, that he thought
if he could only remain there, away from the conflict of the world, he
could write of such things as only poets dream and painters see.

He had readied the stream, and was about to retrace his steps, when he
heard the rustle of a dress, and coming round a bend in the path he saw
Elise Durwent. She was in an evening gown that looked oddly exotic in
those surroundings, and, still in a haze of reverie, he stood in
perplexed silence until she stopped opposite him.

'Have I interrupted the muse?' she said.

'On the contrary, you have awakened it. I was just thinking how vivid
you looked with that setting of overhanging bushes and the background
of fields. I--I think it must have been your gown that gave such a
quaintly incongruous effect.'

'And, of course, there is nothing incongruous in a dinner-jacket near a
trout-stream? If I were an artist I should paint you, and call t