think you
would prefer to take, whether it's really right or not. But I'm glad he
is not so easy going as that.

It was exciting to wheel into a little road like a lane, marked
"Tintagel"! I felt my copy of "Le Morte d'Arthur" turning in my hand,
like a water-diviner's rod. We took the lane to avoid a tremendous hill,
because hills give Mrs. Norton the "creeps" in her feet and back hair,
and she never recovers until she has had tea. But it was a charming
lane, with views by and by of wide, purple moorland, sunset-red with new
heather; and the sky had turned from bluebell azure to green and rose,
in a wonderful, chameleon way, which it seems that the sky has in
Cornwall. I suppose it was a Celtic habit! All about us billowed a
profusion of wild beauty; and though for a long time there was nothing
alive in sight except a flock of bright pink sheep, my stage-managing
fancy called up knights of the round table, "pricking" o'er the downs on
their panoplied steeds to the rescue of fair, distressed damsels. And
the bright mirrors which the fleeting rain had dropped along the road
were the knights' polished shields, laid down to save the ladies from
wetting the points of their jewelled slippers.

Then came my first sight of the Cornish sea, deep hyacinth, with golden
sails scattered upon it, and Arthur's cliffs rising dark out of its
satin sheen. Beyond, in the background, gray houses and cottages grouped
together, the stone and slates worn shiny with age, like very old
marble, so that they reflected glints of colour from the rose and violet
sky.

By the time I was dressed for dinner it was sunset, and I went to sit on
the terrace and watch the splendid cloud pageant. I seemed to be the
only one of our party who had come down yet, though, to tell the whole,
_whole_ truth, I had had a sneaking idea Sir Lionel would perhaps be
strolling about with a cigarette, looking nice and slim, and young, and
soldierly in his dinner jacket. He is nicer to look at in that than in
almost anything else, I think, as most Englishmen are.

He wasn't there, however, so I had to admire his Cornish sunset without
him. And I had such fine thoughts about it, too!--at least they seemed
fine to me; and if I weren't quite a congenial friend of my own it would
have seemed a waste of good material to lavish them on myself alone.

I saw through the open door of the sunset, into Arthur's kingdom, where
he still rules, you know, and is lord of all. The w