its blaze of colour against a hill-slope dark
with pines. There was no hedge whatever to this delightful garden. It
seemed to go straight into the pine-woods; only an invisible netting
marked its limits and fended off the industrious curiosity of the
rabbits.

"This strip of wood is ours right up to the crest," he said, "and from
the crest one has a view. One has two views. If you would care----?"

The lady made it clear that she was there to see all she could. She
radiated her appetite to see. He carried a fur stole for her over his
arm and flicked the way up the hill. Flip, flap, flop. She followed
demurely.

"This is the only view I care to show you now," he said at the crest.
"There was a better one beyond there. But--it has been defiled.... Those
hills! I knew you would like them. The space of it! And ... yet----.
This view--lacks the shining ponds. There are wonderful distant ponds.
After all I must show you the other! But you see there is the high-road,
and the high-road has produced an abomination. Along here we go. Now.
Don't look down please." His gesture covered the foreground. "Look right
over the nearer things into the distance. There!"

The lady regarded the wide view with serene appreciation. "I don't see,"
she said, "that it's in any way ruined. It's perfect."

"You don't see! Ah! you look right over. You look high. I wish I could
too. But that screaming board! I wish the man's crusts would choke
him."

And indeed quite close at hand, where the road curved about below them,
the statement that Staminal Bread, the True Staff of Life, was sold only
by the International Bread Shops, was flung out with a vigour of yellow
and Prussian blue that made the landscape tame.

His finger directed her questioning eye.

"_Oh!_" said the lady suddenly, as one who is convicted of a stupidity
and coloured slightly.

"In the morning of course it is worse. The sun comes directly on to it.
Then really and truly it blots out everything."

The lady stood quite silent for a little time, with her eyes on the
distant ponds. Then he perceived that she was blushing. She turned to
her interlocutor as a puzzled pupil might turn to a teacher.

"It really is very good bread," she said. "They make it----Oh! most
carefully. With the germ in. And one has to tell people."

Her point of view surprised him. He had expected nothing but a docile
sympathy. "But to tell people _here_!" he said.

"Yes, I suppose one oughtn't to t