nd opened the high French window into the
garden at the back of the house.

"Christian, for heaven's sake come out! I can't stand this stinking
room any longer! I feel as if all the imbecilities that I've had to
endure this afternoon were hanging in a cloud over the billiard table.
Come up to the old stone on the hill, and have some fresh air."

He stepped out into the garden, and Christian followed him, smiling
within herself at his impatience, the absurd impatience that she loved
because it was his. It wouldn't be Larry if he suffered fools, or
anything else that he disliked, gladly or peaceably. The feeling that
she was immeasurably older than he was was always at its most
convincing when his painting was in question; even she could not quite
realise what it meant to him to have rude hand laid upon the child of
his soul.

The garden was dank and heavy with overgrown, dying things, as
ill-cared-for gardens are wont to be at the end of September, but the
tall bush of sweet-scented verbena, that grew by the door in the south
wall, was still as green and sweet as in high summer. Christian broke
off some sprays and drew them through her hands before she put one
into the front of her shirt.

"Here, Larry," she said, giving him one, "this will help you to forget
the billiard room!"

Larry gave her a long look as he took it; "I don't altogether want to
forget it," he said. "I daresay good old Dixie was a useful
discipline."

Had Christian heard Mrs. Dixon's final aspiration she would have
realised that with it Dixie had covered her failure as an art critic.

Outside the garden was a wide belt of fir trees, and beyond and above
the trees, stretched the great hill, Cnochan an Ceoil Sidhe, the Hill
of Fairy Music, that gave its name to the house and demesne. Christian
and Larry passed through the shadowy grove, walking side by side along
the narrow track, their footsteps made noiseless by its thick covering
of pine needles. It was dark in the wood; the fir trees towered in
gloom above them; here and there in the deep of the branches there was
the stir of a wing, as a pigeon settled to its nest; from beyond the
wood came a brief, shrill bicker of starlings; all things beside these
were mute, and in the silent dusk, spirit was sensitive to spirit, and
the air was tense with the unspoken word.

The sun was low in the west when they came out on to the open
hillside, and went on up the path, through the heather, that led t