. Travelling along grass-bordered roads, the beauty of
this England struck his not too sensitive spirit and made him almost
gasp. It was that moment of the year when the countryside seems to faint
from its own loveliness, from the intoxication of its scents and sounds.
Creamy-white may, splashed here and there with crimson, flooded the
hedges in breaking waves of flower-foam; the fields were all buttercup
glory; every tree had its cuckoo, calling; every bush its blackbird or
thrush in full even-song. Swallows were flying rather low, and the sky,
whose moods they watch, had the slumberous, surcharged beauty of a long,
fine day, with showers not far away. Some orchards were still in
blossom, and the great wild bees, hunting over flowers and grasses warm
to their touch, kept the air deeply murmurous. Movement, light, color,
song, scent, the warm air, and the fluttering leaves were confused, till
one had almost become the other.

And Stanley thought, for he was not rhapsodic 'Wonderful pretty country!
The way everything's looked after--you never see it abroad!'

But the car, a creature with little patience for natural beauty, had
brought him to the crossroads and stood, panting slightly, under the
cliff-bank whereon grew Tod's cottage, so loaded now with lilac,
wistaria, and roses that from the road nothing but a peak or two of the
thatched roof could be seen.

Stanley was distinctly nervous. It was not a weakness his face and
figure were very capable of showing, but he felt that dryness of mouth
and quivering of chest which precede adventures of the soul. Advancing up
the steps and pebbled path, which Clara had trodden once, just nineteen
years ago, and he himself but three times as yet in all, he cleared his
throat and said to himself: 'Easy, old man! What is it, after all? She
won't bite!' And in the very doorway he came upon her.

What there was about this woman to produce in a man of common sense such
peculiar sensations, he no more knew after seeing her than before.
Felix, on returning from his visit, had said, "She's like a Song of the
Hebrides sung in the middle of a programme of English ballads." The
remark, as any literary man's might, had conveyed nothing to Stanley, and
that in a far-fetched way. Still, when she said: "Will you come in?" he
felt heavier and thicker than he had ever remembered feeling; as a glass
of stout might feel coming across a glass of claret. It was, perhaps,
the gaze of her