tterance!' she said. 'As we to the brutes, poets are
to us.'

He listened somewhat with the head of the hanged. A beautiful woman
choosing to rhapsodize has her way, and is not subjected to the critical
commentary within us. He wondered whether she had discoursed in such a
fashion to his uncle.

'I can read good poetry,' said he.

'If you would have this valley--or mountain-cleft, one should call
it--described, only verse could do it for you,' Diana pursued, and
stopped, glanced at his face, and smiled. She had spied the end of a
towel peeping out of one of his pockets. 'You came out for a bath! Go
back, by all means, and mount that rise of grass where you first saw
me; and down on the other side, a little to the right, you will find the
very place for a bath, at a corner of the rock--a natural fountain; a
bubbling pool in a ring of brushwood, with falling water, so tempting
that I could have pardoned a push: about five feet deep. Lose no time.'

He begged to assure her that he would rather stroll with her: it had
been only a notion of bathing by chance when he pocketed the towel.

'Dear me,' she cried, 'if I had been a man I should have scurried off at
a signal of release, quick as a hare I once woke up in a field with my
foot on its back.'

Dacier's eyebrows knotted a trifle over her eagerness to dismiss him:
he was not used to it, but rather to be courted by women, and to
condescend.

'I shall not long, I'm afraid, have the pleasure of walking beside you
and hearing you. I had letters at Lugano. My uncle is unwell, I hear.'

'Lord Dannisburgh?'

The name sprang from her lips unhesitatingly.

His nodded affirmative altered her face and her voice.

'It is not a grave illness?'

'They rather fear it.'

'You had the news at Lugano?'

He answered the implied reproach: 'I can be of no, service.'

'But surely!'

'It's even doubtful that he would be bothered to receive me. We hold no
views in common--excepting one.'

'Could I?' she exclaimed. 'O that I might! If he is really ill! But if
it is actually serious he would perhaps have a wish... I can nurse. I
know I have the power to cheer him. You ought indeed to be in England.'

Dacier said he had thought it better to wait for later reports. 'I shall
drive to Lugano this afternoon, and act on the information I get there.
Probably it ends my holiday.'

'Will you do me the favour to write me word?--and especially tell me if
you think he would like to hav