."

He beamed over the effect of this and shook hands with effusion, and
Lady Palsworthy suddenly appeared as his confederate and disentangled
the vicar's aunt.

"I love this warm end of summer more than words can tell," he said.
"I've tried to make words tell it. It's no good. Mild, you know, and
boon. You want music."

Ann Veronica agreed, and tried to make the manner of her assent cover a
possible knowledge of a probable poem.

"Splendid it must be to be a composer. Glorious! The Pastoral.
Beethoven; he's the best of them. Don't you think? Tum, tay, tum, tay."

Ann Veronica did.

"What have you been doing since our last talk? Still cutting up
rabbits and probing into things? I've often thought of that talk of
ours--often."

He did not appear to require any answer to his question.

"Often," he repeated, a little heavily.

"Beautiful these autumn flowers are," said Ann Veronica, in a wide,
uncomfortable pause.

"Do come and see the Michaelmas daisies at the end of the garden," said
Mr. Manning, "they're a dream." And Ann Veronica found herself being
carried off to an isolation even remoter and more conspicuous than the
corner of the lawn, with the whole of the party aiding and abetting and
glancing at them. "Damn!" said Ann Veronica to herself, rousing herself
for a conflict.

Mr. Manning told her he loved beauty, and extorted a similar admission
from her; he then expatiated upon his own love of beauty. He said that
for him beauty justified life, that he could not imagine a good action
that was not a beautiful one nor any beautiful thing that could be
altogether bad. Ann Veronica hazarded an opinion that as a matter of
history some very beautiful people had, to a quite considerable extent,
been bad, but Mr. Manning questioned whether when they were bad they
were really beautiful or when they were beautiful bad. Ann Veronica
found her attention wandering a little as he told her that he was not
ashamed to feel almost slavish in the presence of really beautiful
people, and then they came to the Michaelmas daisies. They were really
very fine and abundant, with a blaze of perennial sunflowers behind
them.

"They make me want to shout," said Mr. Manning, with a sweep of the arm.

"They're very good this year," said Ann Veronica, avoiding controversial
matter.

"Either I want to shout," said Mr. Manning, "when I see beautiful
things, or else I want to weep." He paused and looked at her, and said,
with a su