en--bloom so thickly set that
hardly a green prickle was visible; bloom of one pure vivid yellow,
undimmed in the distance, unmarked to closest view, a yellow that was
pure essence of that colour untinged by any breath of aught else. The
air reeked with the rich scent; the greyness of sky and land became one
neutral tone for the onslaught of those pools of flaring molten gold
that burnt to heaven with their undestructive flame. And every ardent
sheet of it had a grape-like bloom, made by the velvety quality of the
thousands of close-set petals; they gave the sensation of exquisite
touch merely by looking at them, while their passionate colour and scent
made the senses drunken on pure loveliness.

That was how it had taken Boase--how in normal days it would have taken
Ishmael, even more keenly. Now he stood staring at it, hardly seeing,
untouched to anything but a bleak knowledge that it was beautiful. Not
a breath of ecstasy went through him; for him it was nothing, and he
never even noticed that Boase was watching him. He moved forward as
though to continue the walk, and the Parson fell into stride beside him.
Something in Ishmael was dead, and in dying it had for the time being
stunned what Boase could only hope was a more vital and permanent part.

Ishmael said good-bye at the Vicarage and went home again, his mind
floating through greyness even as his body was passing through the grey
of the weather and surroundings. At home he found John-James waiting to
consult him about the breaking up of a grass-field, and harnessing the
horse to the iron-toothed tormentor, he took it out himself and spent
the rest of the day driving it over the tumbling clods.

CHAPTER XVII

THE CLIFF AND THE VALLEY

A month later Annie's religiosity, which had been increasing in
violence, unmistakably took the form of mania. She became very violent,
and for her own sake as much as for her family's she was removed to a
doctor's establishment for such cases in Devonshire. The whole affair
left the three at home very untouched--John-James because he was of a
stolid habit, Vassie because she was never in sympathy with her mother
and had borne much from her of late, and Ishmael because it seemed to
him to have really no more to do with him intimately than if she had
been a stranger woman living in his house. Both he and Vassie felt
guiltily on the subject, not realising that reaction from strain was at
the bottom of their seeming impas