me, flushing the dark river beneath him and the virgin
snows above. His wings were infinite, his youth eternal; the sun was
a jewel on his finger as he passed it in benediction over the world.
Creation, no longer monotonous, acclaimed him, in widening melody, in
brighter radiances. Was Love a column of fire? Was he a torrent of song?
Was he greater than either--the touch of a man on a woman?

It was the merest accident that Rickie had not been disgusted. But this
he could not know.

Mr. Pembroke, when he called the two dawdlers into lunch, was aware of a
hand on his arm and a voice that murmured, "Don't--they may be happy."

He stared, and struck the gong. To its music they approached, priest and
high priestess.

"Rickie, can I give these sandwiches to the boot boy?" said the one. "He
would love them."

"The gong! Be quick! The gong!"

"Are you smoking before lunch?" said the other.

But they had got into heaven, and nothing could get them out of it.
Others might think them surly or prosaic. He knew. He could remember
every word they spoke. He would treasure every motion, every glance of
either, and so in time to come, when the gates of heaven had shut, some
faint radiance, some echo of wisdom might remain with him outside.

As a matter of fact, he saw them very little during his visit. He
checked himself because he was unworthy. What right had he to pry, even
in the spirit, upon their bliss? It was no crime to have seen them
on the lawn. It would be a crime to go to it again. He tried to keep
himself and his thoughts away, not because he was ascetic, but because
they would not like it if they knew. This behaviour of his suited them
admirably. And when any gracious little thing occurred to them--any
little thing that his sympathy had contrived and allowed--they put it
down to chance or to each other.

So the lovers fall into the background. They are part of the distant
sunrise, and only the mountains speak to them. Rickie talks to Mr.
Pembroke, amidst the unlit valleys of our over-habitable world.

IV

Sawston School had been founded by a tradesman in the seventeenth
century. It was then a tiny grammar-school in a tiny town, and the City
Company who governed it had to drive half a day through the woods and
heath on the occasion of their annual visit. In the twentieth century
they still drove, but only from the railway station; and found
themselves not in a tiny town, nor yet in a large one, but amongst