, she looked at the ground; it pleased her to scrutinise
this inch of the soil of South America so minutely that she noticed
every grain of earth and made it into a world where she was endowed with
the supreme power. She bent a blade of grass, and set an insect on the
utmost tassel of it, and wondered if the insect realised his strange
adventure, and thought how strange it was that she should have bent that
tassel rather than any other of the million tassels.

"You've never told me you name," said Hewet suddenly. "Miss Somebody
Vinrace. . . . I like to know people's Christian names."

"Rachel," she replied.

"Rachel," he repeated. "I have an aunt called Rachel, who put the life
of Father Damien into verse. She is a religious fanatic--the result of
the way she was brought up, down in Northamptonshire, never seeing a
soul. Have you any aunts?"

"I live with them," said Rachel.

"And I wonder what they're doing now?" Hewet enquired.

"They are probably buying wool," Rachel determined. She tried to
describe them. "They are small, rather pale women," she began, "very
clean. We live in Richmond. They have an old dog, too, who will only
eat the marrow out of bones. . . . They are always going to church.
They tidy their drawers a good deal." But here she was overcome by the
difficulty of describing people.

"It's impossible to believe that it's all going on still!" she
exclaimed.

The sun was behind them and two long shadows suddenly lay upon the
ground in front of them, one waving because it was made by a skirt, and
the other stationary, because thrown by a pair of legs in trousers.

"You look very comfortable!" said Helen's voice above them.

"Hirst," said Hewet, pointing at the scissorlike shadow; he then rolled
round to look up at them.

"There's room for us all here," he said.

When Hirst had seated himself comfortably, he said:

"Did you congratulate the young couple?"

It appeared that, coming to the same spot a few minutes after Hewet and
Rachel, Helen and Hirst had seen precisely the same thing.

"No, we didn't congratulate them," said Hewet. "They seemed very happy."

"Well," said Hirst, pursing up his lips, "so long as I needn't marry
either of them--"

"We were very much moved," said Hewet.

"I thought you would be," said Hirst. "Which was it, Monk? The thought
of the immortal passions, or the thought of new-born males to keep the
Roman Catholics out? I assure you," he said to Helen, "he's capa