own the garden, and Hirst rose too
and paced by her side. He was rather disturbed, uncomfortable, and full
of thought. Neither of them spoke.

The sun was beginning to go down, and a change had come over the
mountains, as if they were robbed of their earthly substance, and
composed merely of intense blue mist. Long thin clouds of flamingo red,
with edges like the edges of curled ostrich feathers, lay up and down
the sky at different altitudes. The roofs of the town seemed to have
sunk lower than usual; the cypresses appeared very black between the
roofs, and the roofs themselves were brown and white. As usual in
the evening, single cries and single bells became audible rising from
beneath.

St. John stopped suddenly.

"Well, you must take the responsibility," he said. "I've made up my
mind; I shall go to the Bar."

His words were very serious, almost emotional; they recalled Helen after
a second's hesitation.

"I'm sure you're right," she said warmly, and shook the hand he held
out. "You'll be a great man, I'm certain."

Then, as if to make him look at the scene, she swept her hand round the
immense circumference of the view. From the sea, over the roofs of the
town, across the crests of the mountains, over the river and the plain,
and again across the crests of the mountains it swept until it reached
the villa, the garden, the magnolia-tree, and the figures of Hirst and
herself standing together, when it dropped to her side.

Chapter XVI

Hewet and Rachel had long ago reached the particular place on the edge
of the cliff where, looking down into the sea, you might chance on
jelly-fish and dolphins. Looking the other way, the vast expanse of land
gave them a sensation which is given by no view, however extended, in
England; the villages and the hills there having names, and the farthest
horizon of hills as often as not dipping and showing a line of mist
which is the sea; here the view was one of infinite sun-dried earth,
earth pointed in pinnacles, heaped in vast barriers, earth widening
and spreading away and away like the immense floor of the sea, earth
chequered by day and by night, and partitioned into different lands,
where famous cities were founded, and the races of men changed from dark
savages to white civilised men, and back to dark savages again. Perhaps
their English blood made this prospect uncomfortably impersonal and
hostile to them, for having once turned their faces that way they nex