t Selwyn cared more for the sun and the infinite blue above, and the
vast cloud-forms piled up in argent splendour behind a sea of amethyst.

"The darker, vaguer phases of beauty," he said to Eileen, smiling,
"attract and fascinate those young in experience. Tragedy is always
better appreciated and better rendered by those who have never lived it.
The anatomy of sadness, the subtler fascination of life brooding in
shadow, appeals most keenly to those who can study and reflect, then
dismiss it all and return again to the brightness of existence which has
not yet for them been tarnished."

He had never before, even by slightest implication, referred to his own
experience with life. She was not perfectly certain that he did so now.

They were standing on one of the treeless hills--a riotous tangle of
grasses and wild flowers--looking out to sea across Sky Pond. He had a
rod; and as he stood he idly switched the gaily coloured flies backward
and forward.

"My tastes," he said, still smiling, "incline me to the garishly sunlit
side of this planet." And, to tease her and arouse her to combat: "I
prefer a farandole to a nocturne; I'd rather have a painting than an
etching; Mr. Whistler bores me with his monochromatic mud; I don't like
dull colours, dull sounds, dull intellects; and anything called 'an
arrangement' on canvas, or anything called 'a human document' or 'an
appreciation' in literature, or anything 'precious' in art, or any
author who 'weaves' instead of writes his stories--all these irritate
me when they do not first bore me to the verge of anaesthesia."

He switched his trout-flies defiantly, hopeful of an indignant retort
from her; but she only laughed and glanced at him, and shook her pretty
head.

"There's just enough truth in what you say to make a dispute quite
profitless. Besides, I don't feel like single combat; I'm too glad to
have you here."

Standing there--fairly swimming--in the delicious upper-air currents,
she looked blissfully across the rolling moors, while the sunlight
drenched her and the salt wind winnowed the ruddy glory of her hair, and
from the tangle of tender blossoming green things a perfume mounted,
saturating her senses as she breathed it deeper in the happiness of
desire fulfilled and content quite absolute.

"After all," she said, "what more is there than this? Earth and sea and
sky and sun, and a friend to show them to. . . . Because, as I wrote
you, the friend is quite neces