dd superstition of these later days--that it is necessary to
leave London at least once a year; consequently Mary had some knowledge
of various seaside resorts on the south and east coasts, where
Londoners gather in hordes, turn the sands into one vast, bad
music-hall, and derive, as they say, enormous benefit from the change.
But experiences such as these give but little knowledge of the country
in its true and occult sense; and yet Mary, as she sat in the dusk
beneath the whispering tree, knew something of the secret of the wood,
of the valley shut in by high hills, where the sound of pouring water
always echoes from the clear brook. And to Darnell these were nights of
great dreams; for it was the hour of the work, the time of
transmutation, and he who could not understand the miracle, who could
scarcely believe in it, yet knew, secretly and half consciously, that
the water was being changed into the wine of a new life. This was ever
the inner music of his dreams, and to it he added on these still and
sacred nights the far-off memory of that time long ago when, a child,
before the world had overwhelmed him, he journeyed down to the old grey
house in the west, and for a whole month heard the murmur of the forest
through his bedroom window, and when the wind was hushed, the washing of
the tides about the reeds; and sometimes awaking very early he had heard
the strange cry of a bird as it rose from its nest among the reeds, and
had looked out and had seen the valley whiten to the dawn, and the
winding river whiten as it swam down to the sea. The memory of all this
had faded and become shadowy as he grew older and the chains of common
life were riveted firmly about his soul; all the atmosphere by which he
was surrounded was well-nigh fatal to such thoughts, and only now and
again in half-conscious moments or in sleep he had revisited that valley
in the far-off west, where the breath of the wind was an incantation,
and every leaf and stream and hill spoke of great and ineffable
mysteries. But now the broken vision was in great part restored to him,
and looking with love in his wife's eyes he saw the gleam of water-pools
in the still forest, saw the mists rising in the evening, and heard the
music of the winding river.

They were sitting thus together on the Friday evening of the week that
had begun with that odd and half-forgotten visit of Mrs. Nixon, when, to
Darnell's annoyance, the door-bell gave a discordant peal, and A