unconventional as they were, he stretched out his hand to Mary Gray, and led her out on to the lawn as if for a dance. 

 The French windows, thus flung open, let in an evening even lovelier than that of the day before. The west was swimming with sanguine colours, and a sort of sleepy flame lay along the lawn. The twisted shadows of the one or two garden trees showed upon this sheen, not gray or black, as in common daylight, but like arabesques written in vivid violet ink on some page of Eastern gold. The sunset was one of those festive and yet mysterious conflagrations in which common things by their colours remind us of costly or curious things. The slates upon the sloping roof burned like the plumes of a vast peacock, in every mysterious blend of blue and green. The red-brown bricks of the wall glowed with all the October tints of strong ruby and tawny wines. The sun seemed to set each object alight with a different coloured flame, like a man lighting fireworks; and even Innocent’s hair, which was of a rather colourless fairness, seemed to have a flame of pagan gold on it as he strode across the lawn towards the one tall ridge of rockery. 

 “What would be the good of gold,” he was saying, “if it did not glitter? Why should we care for a black sovereign any more than for a black sun at noon? A black button would do just as well. Don’t you see that everything in this garden looks like a jewel? And will you kindly tell me what the deuce is the good of a jewel except that it looks like a jewel? Leave off buying and selling, and start looking! Open your eyes, and you’ll wake up in the New Jerusalem. 

 “All is gold that glitters— Tree and tower of brass; Rolls the golden evening air Down the golden grass. Kick the cry to Jericho, How yellow mud is sold; All is gold that glitters, For the glitter is the gold.” 

 “And who wrote that?” asked Rosamund, amused. 

 “No one will ever write it,” answered Smith, and cleared the rockery with a flying leap. 

 “Really,” said Rosamund to Michael Moon, “he ought to be sent to an asylum. Don’t you think so?” 

 “I beg your pardon,” inquired Michael, rather sombrely; his long, swarthy head was dark against the sunset, and, either by accident or mood, he had the look of something isolated and even hostile amid the social extravagance of the garden. 

 “I only said Mr. Smith ought to go to an asylum,” repeated the lady. 

 The 

 Prev. P 26/132 next