the wood, in the distance behind them. The voice
of Mr. Eager? He shrugged his shoulders. An Italian's ignorance is
sometimes more remarkable than his knowledge. She could not make him
understand that perhaps they had missed the clergymen. The view was
forming at last; she could discern the river, the golden plain, other
hills.

"Eccolo!" he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of
the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little
open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end.

"Courage!" cried her companion, now standing some six feet above.
"Courage and love."

She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view,
and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating
the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems collecting into
pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But
never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head,
the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man.
But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone.

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he
contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant
joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue
waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and
kissed her.

Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called,
"Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!" The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett
who stood brown against the view.

Chapter VII: They Return

Some complicated game had been playing up and down the hillside all the
afternoon. What it was and exactly how the players had sided, Lucy
was slow to discover. Mr. Eager had met them with a questioning eye.
Charlotte had repulsed him with much small talk. Mr. Emerson, seeking
his son, was told whereabouts to find him. Mr. Beebe, who wore the
heated aspect of a neutral, was bidden to collect the factions for the
return home. There was a general sense of groping and bewilderment. Pan
had been amongst them--not the great god Pan, who has been buried these
two thousand years, but the little god Pan, who presides over social
contretemps and unsuccessful picnics. Mr. Beebe had lost every one, and
had consumed in solitude the tea-basket which he had b