ers wrong? They must be in a
bad way!" And for some seconds I felt sorry for them, and was
discouraged. But then I thought: "Not at all--obviously not! For if
they do not find it ridiculous to feel contempt, they are perfectly right
to feel contempt, it being natural to them; and you have no business to
be sorry for them, for that is, after all, only your euphemism for
contempt. They are all right, being the expressions of contemptuous
moods, having religions and so forth, suitable to these moods; and the
religion of your mood would be Greek to them, and probably a matter for
contempt. But this only makes it the more interesting. For though to
you, for instance, it may seem impossible to worship Mystery with one
lobe of the brain, and with the other to explain it, the thought that
this may not seem impossible to others should not discourage you; it is
but another little piece of that Mystery which makes life so wonderful
and sweet."

The sun, fallen now almost to the level of the cliff, was slanting upward
on to the burnt-red pine boughs, which had taken to themselves a quaint
resemblance to the great brown limbs of the wild men Titian drew in his
pagan pictures, and down below us the sea-nymphs, still swimming to
shore, seemed eager to embrace them in the enchanted groves. All was
fused in that golden glow of the sun going down-sea and land gathered
into one transcendent mood of light and colour, as if Mystery desired to
bless us by showing how perfect was that worshipful adjustment, whose
secret we could never know. And I said to myself: "None of those
thoughts of yours are new, and in a vague way even you have thought them
before; but all the same, they have given you some little feeling of
tranquillity."

And at that word of fear I rose and invited my companion to return toward
the town. But as we stealthy crept by the "Osteria di Tranquillita," our
friend in the bowler hat came out with a gun over his shoulder and waved
his hand toward the Inn.

"You come again in two week--I change all that! And now," he added, "I
go to shoot little bird or two," and he disappeared into the golden haze
under the olive-trees.

A minute later we heard his gun go off, and returned homeward with a
prayer.

1910.

MAGPIE OVER THE HILL

I lay often that summer on a slope of sand and coarse grass, close to the
Cornish sea, trying to catch thoughts; and I was trying very hard when I
saw them coming hand in hand.