re is no dubious Aphrodite; she is indissolubly
married to man, and behaves like an ordinary British matron, comely
and correct. Durant saw in the immediate foreground a paddock dotted
with young firs, each in a ring fence, beyond the paddock a field
of buttercups shining with a polished gleam, beyond the buttercups a
horizon of trees. Before him to the southeast, soaring above the
roofs of Whithorn-in-Arden, a church spire pointed the way to
heaven; beyond that, traveling low above the railway cutting, a thin
line of smoke indicated the way into the world. Behind him were more
trees; the green crescent of the woods with the white front of Coton
Manor shining in their arms like a heavy, foolish face. He had no
patience with the landscape, with this Nature trimmed and tamed,
these shaven meadows and clean-cut hedges and little rectangular
plantations. It was a typical English landscape, a landscape most
unnecessarily draped, where the bosom of the hills was always
covered, and the very elms were muffled to their feet. A landscape
destitute of passion and sensual charm, a landscape like Miss
Tancred.

Miss Tancred. He no longer felt any wild resentment against that
poor girl; he had learned to judge her leniently. If you live with
bores you inevitably become a bore; at the same time, he admitted
that she was doing her best not to bore him. Meanwhile he
transferred his hatred to her surroundings.

This young man had no philosophy beyond the general impression that
the universe was under infinite obligations to be good to him, a
belief that had found itself rather rudely shaken. He chose his view
and pitched his easel and relieved himself by one deep,
metaphysical, soul-satisfying curse at the devilry of things. Then
he set to work, and with the instinct of a born painter he tried to
find possibilities in the despised landscape. Before long he had
discovered mystery in the woods that lifted their heavy rounded
contours to the sky, gathered and massed and piled on one another
like clouds; deep mystery in their green, green drenched with
liquid and aerial gray, pierced by thick black veins and hollowed
into caverns of darkness and blue dusk. And, though he knew that he
was tying himself to the place by taking it seriously, in an hour's
time he was absorbed and happy.

He was startled by a voice behind him. "Do you think that it's so
very beautiful?"

He turned round. Miss Tancred stood looking over his shoulders, not
a