shed with gold. Then Hirst began
to talk, leaning over the bow.

"It makes one awfully queer, don't you find?" he complained. "These
trees get on one's nerves--it's all so crazy. God's undoubtedly mad.
What sane person could have conceived a wilderness like this, and
peopled it with apes and alligators? I should go mad if I lived
here--raving mad."

Terence attempted to answer him, but Mrs. Ambrose replied instead. She
bade him look at the way things massed themselves--look at the amazing
colours, look at the shapes of the trees. She seemed to be protecting
Terence from the approach of the others.

"Yes," said Mr. Flushing. "And in my opinion," he continued, "the
absence of population to which Hirst objects is precisely the
significant touch. You must admit, Hirst, that a little Italian
town even would vulgarise the whole scene, would detract from the
vastness--the sense of elemental grandeur." He swept his hands towards
the forest, and paused for a moment, looking at the great green mass,
which was now falling silent. "I own it makes us seem pretty small--us,
not them." He nodded his head at a sailor who leant over the side
spitting into the river. "And that, I think, is what my wife feels, the
essential superiority of the peasant--" Under cover of Mr. Flushing's
words, which continued now gently reasoning with St. John and persuading
him, Terence drew Rachel to the side, pointing ostensibly to a great
gnarled tree-trunk which had fallen and lay half in the water. He
wished, at any rate, to be near her, but he found that he could say
nothing. They could hear Mr. Flushing flowing on, now about his wife,
now about art, now about the future of the country, little meaningless
words floating high in air. As it was becoming cold he began to pace
the deck with Hirst. Fragments of their talk came out distinctly as they
passed--art, emotion, truth, reality.

"Is it true, or is it a dream?" Rachel murmured, when they had passed.

"It's true, it's true," he replied.

But the breeze freshened, and there was a general desire for movement.
When the party rearranged themselves under cover of rugs and cloaks,
Terence and Rachel were at opposite ends of the circle, and could not
speak to each other. But as the dark descended, the words of the others
seemed to curl up and vanish as the ashes of burnt paper, and left them
sitting perfectly silent at the bottom of the world. Occasional starts
of exquisite joy ran through them, and