ulated, the Redworths of the world were right: the fruitful labours
were with the mattock and hoe, or the mind directing them. It was a
crushing invasion of materialism, so she proposed a sail to the coast
of France, and thither they flew, touching Cherbourg, Alderney, Sark,
Guernsey, and sighting the low Brittany rocks. Memorable days to Arthur
Rhodes. He saw perpetually the one golden centre in new scenes. He heard
her voice, he treasured her sayings; her gestures, her play of lip and
eyelid, her lift of head, lightest movements, were imprinted on him,
surely as the heavens are mirrored in the quiet seas, firmly and richly
as earth answers to the sprinkled grain. For he was blissfully athirst,
untroubled by a hope. She gave him more than she knew of: a present that
kept its beating heart into the future; a height of sky, a belief in
nobility, permanent through manhood down to age. She was his foam-born
Goddess of those leaping waters; differently hued, crescented, a
different influence. He had a happy week, and it charmed Diana to
hear him tell her so. In spite of Redworth, she had faith in the
fruit-bearing powers of a time of simple happiness, and shared the
youth's in reflecting it. Only the happiness must be simple, that of the
glass to the lovely face: no straining of arms to retain, no heaving of
the bosom in vacancy.

His poverty and capacity for pure enjoyment led her to think of him
almost clingingly when hard news reached her from the quaint old City of
London, which despises poverty and authorcraft and all mean adventurers,
and bows to the lordly merchant, the mighty financier, Redworth's
incarnation of the virtues. Happy days on board the yacht Clarissa!
Diana had to recall them with effort. They who sow their money for a
promising high percentage have built their habitations on the sides
of the most eruptive mountain in Europe. AEtna supplies more certain
harvests, wrecks fewer vineyards and peaceful dwellings. The greed of
gain is our volcano. Her wonder leapt up at the slight inducement she
had received to embark her money in this Company: a South-American mine,
collapsed almost within hearing of the trumpets of prospectus, after two
punctual payments of the half-yearly interest. A Mrs. Ferdinand Cherson,
an elder sister of the pretty Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett, had talked to her of
the cost of things one afternoon at Lady Singleby's garden-party, and
spoken of the City as the place to help to swell an income, i