ling that he and Emmet had not been able to meet this
afternoon quite as before, but the feeling vanished with the
disappearance of the car, leaving him merely glad of the solitude.
Soon he came to a spring, a placid basin of water canopied by an
artificial grotto of rock, and kneeling down he gazed intently at his
own reflection. But no thought of Narcissus, or of Horace's fountain
of Bandusia, intervened to substitute literary memories for the reality
of sensation; he was too genuine a lover of nature to interpret it in
the terms of letters.

Down at the bottom of the pool the water welled up in slow puffs, as if
the ground were panting, stirring dead sticks and withered leaves, and
presently, in the spokes of light that radiated from the reflection of
his head, he descried a frog resting motionless below him. He
disturbed the water, so transparent that he could not tell when his
fingers would enter it, and the frog was gone like a grey streak,
leaving little swirls like dust where its feet had touched the bottom
in its flight. The only thought that floated through his mind as he
knelt there was one concerning the infinitely small in nature. The
place, he knew, was swarming with unseen life, creatures compared with
which the frog was a devouring monster of colossal proportions; and he
reflected that the immeasurable spaces of the sky were not more
wonderful than they.

Having taken a deep drink, he continued on his way, noting that here
beneath the trees the afternoon seemed several hours advanced beyond
the time of the sunny open, for the shadows were like twilight. Below
the path, crossed and recrossed by rustic bridges, ran a small rivulet.
The gurgling of its miniature falls, like the sound of water coming
from the neck of a jug, the occasional cawing of a crow, and the
snapping of twigs beneath his feet were the only interruptions to the
silence. Here was a sudden hushed restfulness, as grateful as the
draught of water he had drunk at the spring.

The rivulet ended in a broader stream, on whose bank he found a long,
low boat-house already locked and abandoned. A wooden bridge ran
across to the opposite shore, where a large dancing-pavilion stood,
waiting for the snow to follow the drifting leaves through the open
windows. A path which skirted this larger stream to the left promised
more seclusion than the way across the bridge and decided his choice.
On the bosom of the water were scattered the wrecks