of detail and
capriciousness of selection with which the mind retains pictures,
reproduced certain masculine discussion of her looks at a time when, as
Nona Holiday of Chovensbury Court, daughter of Sir Hadden Holiday, M.P.
for Tidborough, she had contributed to local gossip by becoming engaged
to Lord Tybar.

"Pretty girl, you know," masculine discussion had said; and Sabre had
thought, "Fools!"

"Oh, hardly pretty," others had maintained; and again "Fools!" he had
thought. "Pretty--_pretty_! Hardly pretty--hardly--!" Furious, he had
flung away from them.

The time and the place of the discussion had been when the news of her
engagement had just been brought into the clubhouse of the Penny Green
Golf Club. He had flung out into the rain which had caused the pavilion
to be crowded. Fools! Was she pretty! Did they mean to say they couldn't
see in her face what he saw in her face? And then he thought, "But of
course they haven't loved her. It's nothing to them what they've only
just heard, but what she told me herself this morning.... And she knew
what it meant to me when she told me.... Although we said nothing. Of
course I see her differently."

He saw her "differently" now after two years of not seeing her, and ten
years since that day of gossip at the golf club. Pretty!... Strange how
he could always remember that smell of the rain as he had come out of
the clubhouse ... and a strange fragrance in the air as now he looked
upon her.

Upon the warm and trembling air, as he stood with his bicycle before the
horses, were borne to him savour of hay newly turned in the fields
about, and of high spring-tide blowing in the hedgerows; and with them
delicious essence from the warm, gleaming bodies of the horses, and
pungent flavour of the saddlery, and the mare's sweet breath puffed
close to his face in little gusty agitations.

The shining, tingling picture of strength and beauty superbly modelled
that the riders and their horses made, seemed, as it were, to arise out
of and be suspended shimmering in the heart of the warm incense that he
savoured. So when a sorcerer casts spiced herbs upon the flame, and
scented vapour uprises, and in the vapour images appear.

Exquisite picture of strength and beauty superbly modelled: the horses'
glossy coats glinting all a polished chestnut's hues; the perfect
artistry and symmetry of slender limbs, and glorious, arching necks, and
noble heads, and velvet muzzles; the dazzling bit