she approached, a
Hamadryad in white muslin, across the grass.

"Why, Denis," she exclaimed, "you look perfectly sweet in your white
trousers."

Denis was dreadfully taken aback. There was no possible retort. "You
speak as though I were a child in a new frock," he said, with a show of
irritation.

"But that's how I feel about you, Denis dear."

"Then you oughtn't to."

"But I can't help it. I'm so much older than you."

"I like that," he said. "Four years older."

"And if you do look perfectly sweet in your white trousers, why
shouldn't I say so? And why did you put them on, if you didn't think you
were going to look sweet in them?"

"Let's go into the garden," said Denis. He was put out; the conversation
had taken such a preposterous and unexpected turn. He had planned a very
different opening, in which he was to lead off with, "You look adorable
this morning," or something of the kind, and she was to answer, "Do
I?" and then there was to be a pregnant silence. And now she had got in
first with the trousers. It was provoking; his pride was hurt.

That part of the garden that sloped down from the foot of the terrace
to the pool had a beauty which did not depend on colour so much as on
forms. It was as beautiful by moonlight as in the sun. The silver of
water, the dark shapes of yew and ilex trees remained, at all hours and
seasons, the dominant features of the scene. It was a landscape in black
and white. For colour there was the flower-garden; it lay to one side
of the pool, separated from it by a huge Babylonian wall of yews. You
passed through a tunnel in the hedge, you opened a wicket in a wall, and
you found yourself, startlingly and suddenly, in the world of colour.
The July borders blazed and flared under the sun. Within its high brick
walls the garden was like a great tank of warmth and perfume and colour.

Denis held open the little iron gate for his companion. "It's like
passing from a cloister into an Oriental palace," he said, and took a
deep breath of the warm, flower-scented air. "'In fragrant volleys they
let fly...' How does it go?

"'Well shot, ye firemen! Oh how sweet And round your equal fires do
meet; Whose shrill report no ear can tell, But echoes to the eye and
smell...'"

"You have a bad habit of quoting," said Anne. "As I never know the
context or author, I find it humiliating."

Denis apologized. "It's the fault of one's education. Things somehow
seem more real and vivid when o