waves of light danced on the walls. A
fountain splashed in the gardens and the long mirror on the right of the
bed had in it the corner of the green lawn and the cool grey stones of
an old wall.

Roddy lay on his back and allowed his sensations to run up and down his
body. It was for moments such as this that his life was intended. He
lived, deliberately and without any selfishness in the matter, for the
emotions that the good old god Pan might choose to provide for him.

He did not know Pan by name except as a silly fancy dress that Monty
Carfax had once worn at a fancy-dress dance and as Someone alluded to
every now and again, vaguely, in the papers, but even though he did not
call him by name he, nevertheless, paid, without question, his daily
homage.

When, as on this beautiful morning, one had only to lie down and be
instantly conscious of a thousand things--sheep moving slowly across
hills, cattle browing in deep pools, those Downs that he loved rising,
slowly, like aged men, to greet a new day--then one questioned nothing,
one argued nothing, one needed no words, one was happy from the crown of
one's head to the toes of one's feet.

On this especial morning these delights were connected with the fact
that, during the day, he intended to propose marriage to Rachel
Beaminster. He thought of her, now, as she had looked last night,
sitting in that wood, in a pale blue dress, with the stars behind her,
staring, so seriously, down into the garden. She had been very beautiful
last night, and it had been a splendid moment--not more splendid than
other moments that he had had, but splendid enough to remember.

He was always prepared for the necessity of the short duration of his
sensations. He had discovered, when he was very young, that nothing
lasted and that the things that lasted the shortest time were generally
the best things, and therefore he had, quite unconsciously, trained
himself to store his memory with splendid moments; now, although he had
no memory at all for any sort of facts or books or histories, he could
recall precisely, in all their forms and colours, scenes, persons,
adventures that had, at any time, thrilled him.

He could remember days; once when, as a little boy, he had been
overtaken by night on the Downs and had sheltered in a deserted house,
black and evil, that had, he afterwards discovered, been, in the
eighteenth century, a private mad-house; once when the sea had been
green and purp