ts dewy brightness of flame-green leaf,
seemed to Ishmael to hold the quality of youth as none had done for
years. He and Nicky and Joe Killigrew and the two girls from Paradise
Cottage spent whole days together, for Joe and Judith, though obviously
very intimate, never seemed to wish for solitude. Together they fronted
the winds and the quick showers and the bright rays, saw the rainbow
lift over the dark sea, watched its passionate colour die and the
sunbright foam fade to pearly dimness or break over water turned to
vivid blue. They heard the first bird-notes begin to glorify the
evenings and saw each day the hedges grow richer with pink campion, with
pale drifts of primroses and the blue clusters of the dog-violets. The
blackthorn began to show a breaking of pale blossom upon its branches
and the hawthorn to vie with it.

Once upon the cliff, Ishmael, walking with Georgie, came on a patch of
the most exquisite of spring flowers, the vernal squill. Georgie clapped
her hands for joy at sight of the delicate blue blossoms, but Ishmael,
lying beside them, buried his face in their rain-washed petals and drew
a deep breath of that scent which is like the memory of may-blossom.

As he breathed in the fragrance it seemed to him for one flashing second
as though the years fell away, that he was again young in mind as he
still felt in body; and for a flash, as on that long-ago evening in
Cloom fields when they had cried the Neck and in the parlour that first
day at St. Renny, time stood still and everything around the one point
where consciousness was poised ceased to be. Youth, spring, and ecstasy
itself were in that breath. Ecstasy, the unphilosophic stone which alone
transmutes to the semblance of gold ... which alone does not ask what
will come next, what has led so far, or where lies actual worth; ecstasy
which is sufficient in itself.... Even thus had he felt when he had
known that Nicky was to come to him, only then the flood-tide of emotion
had been set outwards, while this seemed to beat back and intensify the
sense of self.

It was Nicky who broke through this moment now, clamouring in his turn
to be allowed access to the patch of blue that so excited the grown-ups,
and who then proceeded to rub his brown fists in it and tear the
delicate little flowers up before anyone could stop him. Indeed, after
the first moment Ishmael did not try. He sat watching until Nicky, with
all the uncontrolled excitement of highly-st