re at heart to play the hypocrite. But if,
while kneeling, he said nothing, he saw a good many things in such
tranquillity and clearness as the mere eyes of the body can share but
rarely with their sisters of the imagination. And now it was Alice
who looked mournfully out of the dark at him; and now the little old
charwoman, Mrs Gull, with her bag hooked over her arm, climbed painfully
up the area steps; and now it was the lean vexed face of a friend,
nursing some restless and anxious grievance against him--Mr Bethany;
and then and ever again it was the face of one who seemed pure dream and
fantasy and yet... He listened intently and fancied even now he could
hear the voices of brother and sister talking quietly and circumspectly
together in the room beneath.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A quiet knocking aroused him in the long, tranquil bedroom; and
Herbert's head was poked into the room. 'There's a bath behind that door
over there,' he whispered, `or if you like I'm off for a bathe in the
Widder. It's a luscious day. Shall I wait? All right,' and the head was
withdrawn. 'Don't put much on,' came the voice at the panel; 'we'll be
home again in twenty minutes.'

The green and brightness of the morning must have been prepared for
overnight by spiders and the dew. Everywhere the gleaming nets were
hung, and everywhere there rose a tiny splendour from the waterdrops, so
clear and pure and changeable it seemed with their fire and colour
they shook a tiny crystal music in the air. Herbert led the way along a
clayey downward path beneath hazels tossing softly together their twigs
of nuts, until they came out into a rounded hollow that, mounded with
thyme, sloped gently down to the green banks of the Widder. The water
poured like clearest glass beneath a rain of misty sunbeams.

'My sister always says that this is the very dell Boccaccio had in his
mind's eye when he wrote the "Decameron." There really is something
almost classic in those pines. And I'd sometimes swear with my eyes just
out of the water I've seen Dryads half in hiding peeping between those
beeches. Good Lord, Lawford, what a world we wretched moderns have made,
and missed!'

The water was violently cold. It seemed to Lawford, as it swept up over
his body, and as he plunged his night-distorted eyes beneath its blazing
surface, that it was charged with some strange, powerful enchantment to
wash away in its icy clearness even the memory of the dull and tarnished