One after another they rose and stretched themselves, and in a fewminutes divided more or less into two separate parties. One of theseparties was dominated by Hughling Elliot and Mrs. Thornbury, who,having both read the same books and considered the same questions,were now anxious to name the places beneath them and to hang upon themstores of information about navies and armies, political parties,natives and mineral products--all of which combined, they said,to prove that South America was the country of the future.

　　Evelyn M. listened with her bright blue eyes fixed upon the oracles.

　　"How it makes one long to be a man!" she exclaimed.

　　Mr. Perrott answered, surveying the plain, that a country witha future was a very fine thing.

　　"If I were you," said Evelyn, turning to him and drawing her glovevehemently through her fingers, "I'd raise a troop and conquer somegreat territory and make it splendid. You'd want women for that.

　　I'd love to start life from the very beginning as it ought to be--nothing squalid--but great halls and gardens and splendid men and women.

　　But you--you only like Law Courts!""And would you really be content without pretty frocks and sweetsand all the things young ladies like?" asked Mr. Perrott,concealing a certain amount of pain beneath his ironical manner.

　　"I'm not a young lady," Evelyn flashed; she bit her underlip.

　　"Just because I like splendid things you laugh at me. Why are thereno men like Garibaldi now?" she demanded.

　　"Look here," said Mr. Perrott, "you don't give me a chance.

　　You think we ought to begin things fresh. Good. But I don'tsee precisely--conquer a territory? They're all conquered already,aren't they?""It's not any territory in particular," Evelyn explained.

　　"It's the idea, don't you see? We lead such tame lives. And Ifeel sure you've got splendid things in you."Hewet saw the scars and hollows in Mr. Perrott's sagacious facerelax pathetically. He could imagine the calculations which eventhen went on within his mind, as to whether he would be justifiedin asking a woman to marry him, considering that he made no morethan five hundred a year at the Bar, owned no private means,and had an invalid sister to support. Mr. Perrott again knewthat he was not "quite," as Susan stated in her diary; not quitea gentleman she meant, for he was the son of a grocer in Leeds,had started life with a basket on his back, and now, though practicallyindistinguishable from a born gentleman, showed his origin to keeneyes in an impeccable neatness of dress, lack of freedom in manner,extreme cleanliness of person, and a certain indescribable timidityand precision with his knife and fork which might be the relic of dayswhen meat was rare, and the way of handling it by no means gingerly.

　　The two parties who were strolling about and losing their unitynow came together, and joined each other in a long stare overthe yellow and green patches of the heated landscape below.

　　The hot air danced across it, making it impossible to see the roofsof a village on the plain distinctly. Even on the top of the mountainwhere a breeze played lightly, it was very hot, and the heat, the food,the immense space, and perhaps some less well-defined cause produceda comfortable drowsiness and a sense of happy relaxation in them.

　　They did not say much, but felt no constraint in being silent.

　　"Suppose we go and see what's to be seen over there?" said Arthurto Susan, and the pair walked off together, their departure certainlysending some thrill of emotion through the rest.

　　"An odd lot, aren't they?" said Arthur. "I thought we shouldnever get 'em all to the top. But I'm glad we came, by Jove!

　　I wouldn't have missed this for something.""I don't _like_ Mr. Hirst," said Susan inconsequently. "I supposehe's very clever, but why should clever people be so--I expecthe's awfully nice, really," she added, instinctively qualifyingwhat might have seemed an unkind remark.

　　"Hirst? Oh, he's one of these learned chaps," said Arthur indifferently.

　　"He don't look as if he enjoyed it. You should hear him talkingto Elliot. It's as much as I can do to follow 'em at all.

　　. . . I was never good at my books."With these sentences and the pauses that came between them theyreached a little hillock, on the top of which grew several slim trees.

　　"D'you mind if we sit down here?" said Arthur, looking about him.

　　"It's jolly in the shade--and the view--" They sat down, and lookedstraight ahead of them in silence for some time.

　　"But I do envy those clever chaps sometimes," Arthur remarked.

　　"I don't suppose they ever . . ." He did not finish his sentence.

　　"I can't see why you should envy them," said Susan, with great sincerity.

　　"Odd things happen to one," said Arthur. "One goes along smoothly enough,one thing following another, and it's all very jolly and plain sailing,and you think you know all about it, and suddenly one doesn't knowwhere one is a bit, and everything seems different from what itused to seem. Now to-day, coming up that path, riding behind you,I seemed to see everything as if--" he paused and plucked a pieceof grass up by the roots. He scattered the little lumps of earthwhich were sticking to the roots--"As if it had a kind of meaning.

　　You've made the difference to me," he jerked out, "I don't seewhy I shouldn't tell you. I've felt it ever since I knew you.

　　. . . It's because I love you."Even while they had been saying commonplace things Susan had beenconscious of the excitement of intimacy, which seemed not only to laybare something in her, but in the trees and the sky, and the progressof his speech which seemed inevitable was positively painful to her,for no human being had ever come so close to her before.

　　She was struck motionless as his speech went on, and her heart gavegreat separate leaps at the last words. She sat with her fingerscurled round a stone, looking straight in front of her down themountain over the plain. So then, it had actually happened to her,a proposal of marriage.

　　Arthur looked round at her; his face was oddly twisted. She wasdrawing her breath with such difficulty that she could hardly answer.

　　"You might have known." He seized her in his arms; again and againand again they clasped each other, murmuring inarticulately.

　　"Well," sighed Arthur, sinking back on the ground, "that's the mostwonderful thing that's ever happened to me." He looked as if hewere trying to put things seen in a dream beside real things.

　　There was a long silence.

　　"It's the most perfect thing in the world," Susan stated, very gentlyand with great conviction. It was no longer merely a proposalof marriage, but of marriage with Arthur, with whom she was in love.

　　In the silence that followed, holding his hand tightly in hers,she prayed to God that she might make him a good wife.

　　"And what will Mr. Perrott say?" she asked at the end of it.

　　"Dear old fellow," said Arthur who, now that the first shock was over,was relaxing into an enormous sense of pleasure and contentment.

　　"We must be very nice to him, Susan."He told her how hard Perrott's life had been, and how absurdlydevoted he was to Arthur himself. He went on to tell her abouthis mother, a widow lady, of strong character. In return Susansketched the portraits of her own family--Edith in particular,her youngest sister, whom she loved better than any one else,"except you, Arthur. . . . Arthur," she continued, "what was itthat you first liked me for?""It was a buckle you wore one night at sea," said Arthur,after due consideration. "I remember noticing--it's an absurdthing to notice!--that you didn't take peas, because I don't either."From this they went on to compare their more serious tastes, or ratherSusan ascertained what Arthur cared about, and professed herselfvery fond of the same thing. They would live in London, perhaps havea cottage in the country near Susan's family, for they would findit strange without her at first. Her mind, stunned to begin with,now flew to the various changes that her engagement would make--how delightful it would be to join the ranks of the married women--no longer to hang on to groups of girls much younger than herself--to escape the long solitude of an old maid's life. Now and then heramazing good fortune overcame her, and she turned to Arthur with anexclamation of love.

　　They lay in each other's arms and had no notion that they were observed.

　　Yet two figures suddenly appeared among the trees above them.

　　"Here's shade," began Hewet, when Rachel suddenly stopped dead.

　　They saw a man and woman lying on the ground beneath them, rollingslightly this way and that as the embrace tightened and slackened.

　　The man then sat upright and the woman, who now appeared to be SusanWarrington, lay back upon the ground, with her eyes shut and an absorbedlook upon her face, as though she were not altogether conscious.

　　Nor could you tell from her expression whether she was happy, or hadsuffered something. When Arthur again turned to her, butting heras a lamb butts a ewe, Hewet and Rachel retreated without a word.

　　Hewet felt uncomfortably shy.

　　"I don't like that," said Rachel after a moment.

　　"I can remember not liking it either," said Hewet. "I can remember--"but he changed his mind and continued in an ordinary tone of voice,"Well, we may take it for granted that they're engaged. D'you thinkhe'll ever fly, or will she put a stop to that?"But Rachel was still agitated; she could not get away from the sightthey had just seen. Instead of answering Hewet she persisted.

　　"Love's an odd thing, isn't it, making one's heart beat.""It's so enormously important, you see," Hewet replied.

　　"Their lives are now changed for ever.""And it makes one sorry for them too," Rachel continued, as thoughshe were tracing the course of her feelings. "I don't know eitherof them, but I could almost burst into tears. That's silly,isn't it?""Just because they're in love," said Hewet. "Yes," he added aftera moment's consideration, "there's something horribly patheticabout it, I agree."And now, as they had walked some way from the grove of trees,and had come to a rounded hollow very tempting to the back,they proceeded to sit down, and the impression of the loverslost some of its force, though a certain intensity of vision,which was probably the result of the sight, remained with them.

　　As a day upon which any emotion has been repressed is differentfrom other days, so this day was now different, merely because theyhad seen other people at a crisis of their lives.

　　"A great encampment of tents they might be," said Hewet, looking infront of him at the mountains. "Isn't it like a water-colour too--you know the way water-colours dry in ridges all across the paper--I've been wondering what they looked like."His eyes became dreamy, as though he were matching things,and reminded Rachel in their colour of the green flesh of a snail.

　　She sat beside him looking at the mountains too. When it becamepainful to look any longer, the great size of the view seeming toenlarge her eyes beyond their natural limit, she looked at the ground;it pleased her to scrutinise this inch of the soil of SouthAmerica so minutely that she noticed every grain of earth and madeit into a world where she was endowed with the supreme power.

　　She bent a blade of grass, and set an insect on the utmost tasselof it, and wondered if the insect realised his strange adventure,and thought how strange it was that she should have bent that tasselrather than any other of the million tassels.

　　"You've never told me you name," said Hewet suddenly.

　　"Miss Somebody Vinrace. . . . I like to know people's Christian names.""Rachel," she replied.

　　"Rachel," he repeated. "I have an aunt called Rachel, who putthe life of Father Damien into verse. She is a religious fanatic--the result of the way she was brought up, down in Northamptonshire,never seeing a soul. Have you any aunts?""I live with them," said Rachel.

　　"And I wonder what they're doing now?" Hewet enquired.

　　"They are probably buying wool," Rachel determined. She triedto describe them. "They are small, rather pale women," she began,"very clean. We live in Richmond. They have an old dog, too,who will only eat the marrow out of bones. . . . They arealways going to church. They tidy their drawers a good deal."But here she was overcome by the difficulty of describing people.

　　"It's impossible to believe that it's all going on still!"she exclaimed.

　　The sun was behind them and two long shadows suddenly lay upon theground in front of them, one waving because it was made by a skirt,and the other stationary, because thrown by a pair of legs in trousers.

　　"You look very comfortable!" said Helen's voice above them.

　　"Hirst," said Hewet, pointing at the scissorlike shadow; he thenrolled round to look up at them.

　　"There's room for us all here," he said.

　　When Hirst had seated himself comfortably, he said:

　　"Did you congratulate the young couple?"It appeared that, coming to the same spot a few minutes after Hewetand Rachel, Helen and Hirst had seen precisely the same thing.

　　"No, we didn't congratulate them," said Hewet. "They seemedvery happy.""Well," said Hirst, pursing up his lips, "so long as I needn'tmarry either of them--""We were very much moved," said Hewet.

　　"I thought you would be," said Hirst. "Which was it, Monk?

　　The thought of the immortal passions, or the thought of new-bor............