ght as comes
in summer after perfect weather, frightening in its heat, and silence,
which was broken by the distant thunder travelling low along the ground
like the muttering of all dark places on the earth--such a night as
seems, by very breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful
threats to justify man's cowardice.

The ladies rose at last. The circle of the rosewood dining-table, which
had no cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, had a likeness to
some autumn pool whose brown depths of oily water gleam under the
sunset with red and yellow leaves; above it the smoke of cigarettes was
clinging, like a mist to water when the sun goes down. Shelton became
involved in argument with his neighbour on the English character.

"In England we've mislaid the recipe of life," he said. "Pleasure's a
lost art. We don't get drunk, we're ashamed of love, and as to beauty,
we've lost the eye for' it. In exchange we have got money, but what 's
the good of money when we don't know how to spend it?" Excited by his
neighbour's smile, he added: "As to thought, we think so much of what
our neighbours think that we never think at all.... Have you ever
watched a foreigner when he's listening to an Englishman? We 're in the
habit of despising foreigners; the scorn we have for them is nothing to
the scorn they have for us. And they are right! Look at our taste! What
is the good of owning riches if we don't know how to use them?"

"That's rather new to me," his neighbour said. "There may be something
in it.... Did you see that case in the papers the other day of old
Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a guinea a bottle? When
the purchaser--poor feller!--came to drink it he found eleven bottles
out of twelve completely ullaged--ha! ha! Well, there's nothing wrong
with this"; and he drained his glass.

"No," answered Shelton.

When they rose to join the ladies, he slipped out on the lawn.

At once he was enveloped in a bath of heat. A heavy odour, sensual,
sinister, was in the air, as from a sudden flowering of amorous shrubs.
He stood and drank it in with greedy nostrils. Putting his hand down, he
felt the grass; it was dry, and charged with electricity. Then he saw,
pale and candescent in the blackness, three or four great lilies, the
authors of that perfume. The blossoms seemed to be rising at him
through the darkness; as though putting up their faces to be kissed. He
straightened himself abruptly and went in.