uncheon pass agreeably, without
being dull or intimate. He had formed the opinion, so he told Rachel,
that wonderful treasures lay hid in the depths of the land; the things
Rachel had seen were merely trifles picked up in the course of one short
journey. He thought there might be giant gods hewn out of stone in the
mountain-side; and colossal figures standing by themselves in the middle
of vast green pasture lands, where none but natives had ever trod.
Before the dawn of European art he believed that the primitive huntsmen
and priests had built temples of massive stone slabs, had formed out of
the dark rocks and the great cedar trees majestic figures of gods and
of beasts, and symbols of the great forces, water, air, and forest among
which they lived. There might be prehistoric towns, like those in Greece
and Asia, standing in open places among the trees, filled with the works
of this early race. Nobody had been there; scarcely anything was known.
Thus talking and displaying the most picturesque of his theories,
Rachel's attention was fixed upon him.

She did not see that Hewet kept looking at her across the gangway,
between the figures of waiters hurrying past with plates. He was
inattentive, and Hirst was finding him also very cross and disagreeable.
They had touched upon all the usual topics--upon politics and
literature, gossip and Christianity. They had quarrelled over the
service, which was every bit as fine as Sappho, according to Hewet;
so that Hirst's paganism was mere ostentation. Why go to church, he
demanded, merely in order to read Sappho? Hirst observed that he had
listened to every word of the sermon, as he could prove if Hewet would
like a repetition of it; and he went to church in order to realise the
nature of his Creator, which he had done very vividly that morning,
thanks to Mr. Bax, who had inspired him to write three of the most
superb lines in English literature, an invocation to the Deity.

"I wrote 'em on the back of the envelope of my aunt's last letter," he
said, and pulled it from between the pages of Sappho.

"Well, let's hear them," said Hewet, slightly mollified by the prospect
of a literary discussion.

"My dear Hewet, do you wish us both to be flung out of the hotel by
an enraged mob of Thornburys and Elliots?" Hirst enquired. "The merest
whisper would be sufficient to incriminate me for ever. God!" he broke
out, "what's the use of attempting to write when the world's peopled by
such