ould stop, and
they could walk a little way through the forest.

"There are tracks all through the trees there," he explained. "We're no
distance from civilisation yet."

He scrutinised his wife's painting. Too polite to praise it openly,
he contented himself with cutting off one half of the picture with one
hand, and giving a flourish in the air with the other.

"God!" Hirst exclaimed, staring straight ahead. "Don't you think it's
amazingly beautiful?"

"Beautiful?" Helen enquired. It seemed a strange little word, and Hirst
and herself both so small that she forgot to answer him.

Hewet felt that he must speak.

"That's where the Elizabethans got their style," he mused, staring into
the profusion of leaves and blossoms and prodigious fruits.

"Shakespeare? I hate Shakespeare!" Mrs. Flushing exclaimed; and Wilfrid
returned admiringly, "I believe you're the only person who dares to say
that, Alice." But Mrs. Flushing went on painting. She did not appear
to attach much value to her husband's compliment, and painted steadily,
sometimes muttering a half-audible word or groan.

The morning was now very hot.

"Look at Hirst!" Mr. Flushing whispered. His sheet of paper had slipped
on to the deck, his head lay back, and he drew a long snoring breath.

Terence picked up the sheet of paper and spread it out before Rachel. It
was a continuation of the poem on God which he had begun in the chapel,
and it was so indecent that Rachel did not understand half of it
although she saw that it was indecent. Hewet began to fill in words
where Hirst had left spaces, but he soon ceased; his pencil rolled on
deck. Gradually they approached nearer and nearer to the bank on the
right-hand side, so that the light which covered them became definitely
green, falling through a shade of green leaves, and Mrs. Flushing set
aside her sketch and stared ahead of her in silence. Hirst woke up; they
were then called to luncheon, and while they ate it, the steamer came
to a standstill a little way out from the bank. The boat which was towed
behind them was brought to the side, and the ladies were helped into it.

For protection against boredom, Helen put a book of memoirs beneath her
arm, and Mrs. Flushing her paint-box, and, thus equipped, they allowed
themselves to be set on shore on the verge of the forest.

They had not strolled more than a few hundred yards along the track
which ran parallel with the river before Helen professed to find it