IV

Her pictures and furniture were on view at Christie's in the early

spring, and all Owen's friends met each other in the rooms and on

the staircase.

The pictures were to be sold on Saturday, the furniture, china, and

enamels on the following Monday.

"The pictures don't matter so much, although her own portrait is

going to be sold. But the furniture! Dear God, look at that brute

trying the springs of the sofa where I have sat so often with her.

And there is the chair on which I used to sit listening to her when

she sang. And her piano--why, my God, she is selling her piano!--

What is to become of that woman? A singer who sells her piano!"

"My dear friend, I suppose she had to sell everything or nothing?"

"But she'll have to buy another piano, and she might have kept the

one I gave her. It is extraordinary how religion hardens the heart,

Harding. Do you see that fellow, a great nose, lumpy shoulders,

trousers too short for him, a Hebrew barrel of grease--Rosental. You

know him; I bought that clock from him. He's looking into it to see

if anything has been broken, if it is in as good condition as when

he sold it. The brutes have all joined the 'knock-out,' and there--"

As he said these words young Mr. Rowe, who believed himself to be

connected with society, and who dealt largely in pictures, without,

however, descending to the vulgarity of shop-keeping (he would

resent being called a picture-dealer), approached and insisted on

Sir Owen listening to the story of his difficulties with some county

councillors who could not find the money to build an art gallery.

"But I object to your immortality being put on the rates."

"You write books, Mr. Harding; I can't."

As soon as he left them, Harding, who knew the dealer kind, the

original stock and the hybrid, told an amusing story of Mr. Rowe's

beginnings; and Owen forgot his sentimental trouble; but the story

was interrupted by Lady Ascott coming down the room followed by her

attendants, her literary and musical critics.

"Every one of them most interesting, I assure you, Sir Owen. Mr.

Homer has just returned from Italy--"

"But I know Mr. Homer; we met long ago at Innes' concerts. If I am

not mistaken you were writing a book then about Bellini."

"Yes, 'His Life and Works.' I've just returned from Italy after two

years' reading in the public libraries."

Lady Ascott's musical critic was known to Owen by a small book he had

written entitled "A Guide to the Ring." Before he was a Wagnerian he

was the curator of a museum, and Owen remembered how desirous he was

to learn the difference between Dresden and Chelsea china. He had

dabbled in politics and in journalism; he had collected hymns,

ancient and modern, and Owen was not in the least surprised to hear

that he had become the director of a shop for the sale of religious

prints and statues, or that he had joined the Roman Church, and the

group watched him slinking round on the arm of a young man, one who

sang forty-nine songs by all the composers in Europe in exactly the

same manner.

"He is teaching Botticelli in his three manners," said Lady Ascott,

"and Cyril is thinking of going over to Rome."

"Asher, let us get away from this culture," Harding whispered.

"Yes, let's get away from it; I want to show you a table, the one on

which Evelyn used to write her letters. We bought it together at the

Salle Druot."

"Yes, Asher, yes; but would you mind coming this way, for I see

Ringwood. He goes by in his drooping mantle, looking more like an

umbrella than usual. Lady Ascott has engaged him for the season, and

he goes out with her to talk literature--plush stockings, cockade.

Literature in livery! Ringwood introducing Art!"

Owen laughed, and begged Harding to send his joke to the comic

papers.

"An excellent subject for a cartoon."

"He has stopped again. Now I'm sure he's talking of Sophocles. He

walks on.... I'm mistaken; he is talking about Molière."

"An excellent idea of yours--'Literature in livery!'"

"His prose is always so finely spoken, so pompous, that I cannot help

smiling. You know what I mean."

"I've told you it ought to be sent to the papers. I wish he would

leave that writing-table; and Lady Ascott might at least ask him to

brush his coat."

"It seems to me so strange that she should find pleasure in such

company."

"Men who will not cut their hair. How is it?"

"I suppose attention to externals checks or limits the current of

feeling... or they think so."

"I am feeling enough, God knows, but my suffering does not prevent me

from selecting my waistcoat and tying my tie."

Harding's eyes implied acquiescence in the folding of the scarf (it

certainly was admirably done) and glanced along the sleeves of the

coat--a rough material chosen in a moment of sudden inspiration; and

they did not miss the embroidered waistcoat, nor the daring brown

trousers (in admirable keeping withal), turned up at the ends, of

course, otherwise Owen would not have felt dressed; and, still a

little conscious of the assistance his valet had been to him, he

walked with a long, swinging stride which he thought suited him,

stopping now and again to criticise a friend or a picture.

"There's Merrington. How absurdly he dresses! One would think he was

an actor; yet no man rides better to hounds. Lady Southwick! I must

have a word with her."

Before leaving Harding he mentioned that she attributed her lapses

from virtue, not to passionate temperament, but to charitable

impulses. "She wouldn't kiss--" and Owen whispered the man's name,

"until he promised to give two thousand pounds to a Home for Girl

Mothers."

"Now, my dear Lady Southwick, I'm so delighted to see you here. But

how very sad! The greatest singer of our time."

"She was exceedingly good in two or three parts."

A dispute arose, in which Owen lost his temper; but, recovering it

suddenly, he went down the room with Lady Southwick to show her a

Wedgewood dessert service which he had bought some years ago for

Evelyn, pressing it upon her, urging that he would like her to have

it.

"Every time you see it you will think of us," and he turned on his

heel suddenly, fearing to lose Harding, whom he found shaking hands

with one of the dealers, a man of huge girth--"like a waggoner,"

Owen said, checking a reproof, but he could not help wishing that

Harding would not shake hands with such people, at all events when

he was with him.

"These are the Chadwells, whom--" (Harding whispered a celebrated

name) "used to call the most gentlemanly picture-dealers in

Bond-street." Harding spoke to them, Owen standing apart absorbed in

His grief, until the word "Asher" caught his ear.

"Of whom are you speaking?"

"Of you, of Sir Owen Asher." And Harding followed Owen, intensely

annoyed.

"Not even to a gentlemanly picture-dealer should you--"

"You are entirely wrong; I said 'Sir Owen Asher.'"

"Very strange you should say 'Sir Owen Asher'; why didn't you say Sir

Owen?"

Harding did not answer, being uncertain if it would not be better to

drop Asher's acquaintance. But they had known each other always. It

would be difficult.

"The sale is about to begin," Asher said, and Harding sat down angry

with Asher and interested in the auctioneer's face, created, Harding

thought, for the job... "looking exactly like a Roman bust. Lofty

brow, tight lips, vigilant eyes, voice like a bell.... That damned

fellow Asher! What the hell did he mean--"

The auctioneer sat at a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the

benches the congregation crowded--every shade of nondescript, the

waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the

outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or

journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were

marked in the catalogues, and Harding wondered why.

Around the room were men and women of all classes; a good many of Sir

Owen's "set" had come--"Society being well represented that day," as

the newspapers would put it. All the same, the pictures were not

selling well, not nearly so well as Owen and Harding anticipated.

Harding was glad of this, for his heart was set on a certain drawing

by Boucher.

"I would sooner you had it, Harding, than anybody else. It would be

unendurable if one of those picture-dealers should get it; they'd

come round to my house trying to sell it to me again, whereas in

your rooms--"

"Yes," said Harding, "it will be an excuse to come to see me. Well,

if I can possibly afford it--"

"Of course you can afford it; I paid eighty-seven pounds for it years

ago; it won't go to more than a hundred. I'd really like you to have

it."

"Well, for goodness' sake don't talk so loud, somebody will hear

you."

The pictures went by--portraits of fair ladies and ancient admirals,

landscapes, underwoods and deserts, flower and battle pieces,

pathetic scenes and gallantries. There was a time when every one of

these pictures was the hope and delight of a human being, now they

went by interesting nobody....

At last the first of Evelyn's pictures was hoisted on the easel.

"Good God!" isn't it a miserable sight seeing her pictures going to

whomsoever cares to bid a few pounds. But if I were to buy the whole

collection--"

"I quite understand, and every one is a piece of your life."

The pictures continued to go by.

"I can't stand this much longer."

"Hush!"

The Boucher drawing went up. It was turned to the right and to the

left: a beautiful girl lying on her belly, her legs parted slightly.

Therefore the bidding began briskly, but for some unaccountable

reason it died away. "Somebody must have declared it to be a

forgery," Owen whispered to Harding, and a moment after it became

Harding's property for eighty-seven pounds--"The exact sum I paid

for it years ago. How very extraordinary!"

"A portrait by Manet--a hundred pounds offered, one hundred," and two

grey eyes in a face of stone searched the room for bidders. "One

hundred pounds offered, five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty,"

and so on to two hundred.

"Her portrait will cost me a thousand," Owen whispered to Harding,

and, catching the auctioneer's eyes, he nodded again. Seven hundred.

"Will they never stop bidding? That fellow yonder is determined to

run up the picture." Eight hundred and fifty! The auctioneer raised

his hammer, and the watchful eyes went round the room in search of

some one who would pay another ten pounds for Evelyn's portrait by

Manet. Eight hundred and fifty--eight hundred and fifty. Down came

the hammer. The auctioneer whispered "Sir Owen Asher" to his clerk.

"It's a mercy I got it for that; I was afraid it would go over the

thousand. Now, come, we have got our two pictures. I'm sick of the

place."

Harding had thought of staying on, just to see the end of the sale,

but it was easier to yield to Owen than to argue with him; besides,

he was anxious to see how the drawing would look on his wall. Of

course it was a Boucher. Stupid remarks were always floating about

Christie's. But he would know for certain as soon as he saw the

drawing in a new light.

He was muttering "It is genuine enough," when his servant opened the

door--"Sir Owen Asher."

"I see you have hung up the drawing. It looks very well, doesn't it.

You'll never regret having taken my advice."

"Taken your advice!" Harding was about to answer. "But what is the

use in irritating the poor man? He is so much in love he hardly

knows what he is saying. Owen Asher advising me as to what I should

buy!"

Owen went over and looked into Harding's Ingres.

"Every time one sees it one likes it better." And they talked about

Ingres for some time, until Owen's thoughts went back to Evelyn, and

looking from the portrait by Ingres to the drawing by Boucher he

seemed suddenly to lose control; tears rose to his eyes, and Harding

watched him, wondering whither Owen's imagination carried him. "Is

he far away in Paris, hearing her sing for the first time to Madame

Savelli? Or is he standing with her looking over the bulwarks of the

_Medusa_, seeing the shape of some Greek island dying in the

twilight?" And Harding did not speak, feeling the lover's meditation

to be sacred. Owen flung himself into an arm-chair, and without

withdrawing his eyes from the picture, said, relying on Harding's

friendship:

"It is very like her, it is really very like her. I am much obliged

to you, Harding, for having bought it. I shall come here to see it

occasionally."

"And I'll present you with a key, so that when I am away you can

spend your leisure in front of the picture.... Do you know whom I

shall feel like? Like the friend of King Condules."

"But she'll not ask you to conspire to assassinate me. My murder

would profit you nothing. All the same, Harding, now I come to think

of it, there's a good deal of that queen in Evelyn, or did she

merely desire to take advantage of the excuse to get rid of her

husband?"

"Ancient myths are never very explicit; one reads whatever psychology

one likes into them. Perhaps that is why they never grow old."

The door opened... Harding's servant brought in a parcel of proofs.

"My dear Asher, the proof of an article has just come, and the editor

tells me he'll be much obliged if I look through it at once."

"Shall I wait?"

"Well, I'd sooner you didn't. Correcting a proof with me means a

rewriting, and--"

"You can't concentrate your thoughts while I am roving about the

room. I understand. Are you dining anywhere?"

"I'm not engaged."

The thought crossed Harding's mind when Owen left the room that it

would be better perhaps to write saying that the proofs detained

him, for to spend the evening with Owen would prove wearisome. "No

matter what the subject of conversation may be his mind will go back

to her very soon.... But to leave him alone all the evening would be

selfish, and if I don't dine with him I shall have to dine

alone...." Harding turned to his writing-table, worked on his proof

for a couple of hours, and then went to meet Owen, whom he found

waiting for him at his club.

"My dear friend, I quite agree with you," he said, sitting down to

the table; "what you want is change."

"Do you think, Harding, I shall find any interest again in anything?"

"Of course you will, my dear friend, of course you will." And he

spoke to his friend of ruined palaces and bas-reliefs; Owen listened

vaguely, begging of him at last to come with him.

"It will give you ideas, Harding; you will write better."

Harding shook his head, for it did not seem to him to be his destiny

to relieve the tedium of a yachting excursion in the Mediterranean.

V

"One cannot yacht in the Baltic or in the Gulf of Mexico," Owen said,

and he went to the Mediterranean again to sail about the _Ægean_

Islands, wondering if he should land, changing his mind, deciding

suddenly that the celebrated site he was going to see would not

interest him. He would stand watching the rocky height dying down,

his eyes fixed on the blue horizon, thinking of some Emperor's

palace amid the Illyrian hills, till, acting on a sudden impulse, he

would call an order to the skipper, an order which he would

countermand next day. A few days after the yacht would sail towards

the Acropolis as though Owen had intended to drop anchor in the

Piræeus. But he was too immersed in his grief, he thought, to be

able to give his attention to ruins, whether Roman or Greek. All the

same, he would have to decide if he would return to the islands. He

did not know them all; he had never been to Samos, famous for its

wine and its women.... The wine cloyed the palate and no woman

charmed him in the dance; and he sailed away wondering how he might

relieve the tedium of life, until one day, after long voyaging,

sufficiently recovered from his grief and himself, he leaned over

the taffrail, this time lost in admiration of the rocks and summits

above Syracuse, the Sicilian coasts carrying his thoughts out of the

present into the past, to those valleys where Theocritus watched his

"visionary flocks."

"'His visionary flocks,'" he repeated, wondering if the beautiful

phrase had floated accidentally into his mind, hoping that it was

his own, and then abandoning hope, for he had nearly succeeded in

tracing the author of the phrase; but there was a vision in it more

intense than Tennyson's. "Visionary flocks!" For while the shepherds

watched Theocritus dreamed the immortal sheep and goats which tempt

us for an instant to become shepherds; but Owen knew that the real

flocks would seem unreal to him who knew the visionary ones, so he

turned away from the coasts without a desire in his heart to trouble

the shepherds in the valley with an offer of his services, and

walked up and down the deck thinking how he might obtain a

translation of the idyls.

"Sicily, Sicily!"

It was unendurable that his skipper should come at such a moment to

ask him if he would like to land at Palermo; for why should he land

in Sicily unless to meet the goatherd who in order to beguile

Thyrsis to sing the song of Daphnis told him that "his song was

sweeter than the music of yonder water that is poured from the high

face of the rock"? It was in Sicily that rugged Polyphemus, peering

over some cliffs, sought to discern Galatea in the foam; but before

Owen had time to recall the myth an indenture in the coast line,

revealing a field, reminded him how Proserpine, while gathering

flowers on the plains of Enna with her maidens, had been raped into

the shadows by the dark god. And looking on these waves, he

remembered that it was over them that Jupiter in the form of a bull,

a garlanded bull with crested horns, had sped, bearing Europa away

for his pleasure. Venus had been washed up by these waves! Poseidon!

Sirens and Tritons had disported themselves in this sea, the bluest

and the beautifullest, the one sea that mattered, more important

than all the oceans; the oceans might dry up to-morrow for all he

cared so long as this sea remained; and with the story of Theseus

and "lonely Ariadne on the wharf at Naxos" ringing in his ears he

looked to the north-east, whither lay the Cyclades and Propontis.

Medea, too, had been deserted--"Medea deadlier than the sea." Helen!

All the stories of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" had been lived

about these seas, from the coasts of Sicily to those of Asia Minor,

whence Æneas had made his way to Carthage. Dido, she, too, had been

deserted. All the great love stories of the world had been lived

about these shores and islands; his own story! And he mused for a

long time on the accident--if it were an accident--which had led him

back to this sea. Or had he returned to these shores and islands

merely because there was no other sea in which one could yacht?

Hardly, and he remembered with pleasure that his story differed from

the ancient stories only in this, that Evelyn had fled from him, not

be from her. And for such a woeful reason! That she might repent her

sins in a convent on the edge of Wimbledon Common, whereas Dido was

deserted for--

Again his infernal skipper hanging about. This time he had come with

news that the _Medusa_ was running short of provisions. Would Sir

Owen prefer that they should put in at Palermo or Tunis?

"Tunis, Tunis."

The steerman put down the helm, and the fore and aft sails went over.

Three days later the _Medusa_ dropped her anchor in the Bay of

Tunis, and his skipper was again asking Owen for orders.

"Just take her round to Alexandria and wait for me there," he

answered, feeling he would not be free from England till she was

gone. It was his wish to get away from civilisation for a while, to

hear Arabic, to learn it if he could, to wear a bournous, to ride

Arab horses, live in a tent, to disappear in the desert, yes, and to

be remembered as the last lover of the Mediterranean--that would be

_une belle fin de vie, après tout_.

Then he laughed at his dreams, but they amused him; he liked to look

upon his story as one of the love stories of the world. Rome had

robbed Dido of her lover and him of his mistress. So far as he could

see, the better story was the last, and his thoughts turned

willingly to the Virgil who would arise centuries hence to tell it.

One thing, however, puzzled him. Would the subject-matter he was

creating for the future poet be spoilt if he were to fall in love

with an Arab maiden, some little statuette carved in yellow ivory?

Or would it be enhanced? Would the future Virgil regard her as an

assuagement, a balm? Owen laughed at himself and his dream. But his

mood drifted into sadness; and he asked if Evelyn should be

punished. If so, what punishment would the poet devise for her? In

Theocritus somebody had been punished: a cruel one, who had refused

to relieve the burden of desire even with a kiss, had been killed by

a seemingly miraculous interposition of Love, who, angered at the

sight of the unhappy lover hanging from the neck by the lintel of

the doorpost, fell from his pedestal upon the beloved, while

he stood heart-set watching the bathers in the beautiful

bathing-places.

But Owen could not bring himself to wish for Evelyn's death by the

falling of a statue of Our Lady or St. Joseph; such a death would be

a contemptible one, and he could not wish that anything contemptible

should happen to her, however cruelly she had made him suffer. No,

he did not wish that any punishment should befall her; the fault was

not hers. And he returned in thought to the end which he had devised

for himself--a passing into the desert, leaving no trace but the

single fact that on a certain day he had joined a caravan. Going

whither? Timbuctoo? To be slain there--an English traveller seeking

forgetfulness of a cruel mistress--would be a romantic end for him!

But if his end were captivity, slavery? His thoughts turned from

Timbuctoo to one of the many oases between Tunis and the Soudan. In

one of these it would be possible to make friends with an Arab

chieftain and to live. But would she, whose body was the colour of

amber, or the desert, or any other invention his fancy might devise,

relieve him from the soul-sickness from which he suffered? It seemed

to him that nothing would. All the same, he would have to try to

forget her, "Evelyn, Evelyn."

The bournous which his Arab servant brought in at that moment might

help him. A change of language would be a help, and he might become

a Moslem--for he believed in Mohammedanism as much as in

Christianity; and an acceptance of the Koran would facilitate

travelling in the desert. That and a little Arabic, a few mouthfuls,

and no Mahdi would dare to enslave him.... But if he were only sure

that none would!

Outside horses were stamping, his escort, seven Arab horses with

seven Arabs from the desert, or thereabout, in high-pummelled

saddles, wearing white bournous, their brown, lean hands grasping

long-barrelled guns with small carven stocks. The white Arab which

Owen had purchased yesterday waited, the saddle empty; and, looking

at him before mounting, Owen thought the horse the most beautiful

thing he had ever seen, more like an ornament than a live thing, an

object of luxury rather than of utility. Was he really going to ride

this horse for many hours? To do so seemed like making a drudge of

some beautiful woman. The horse's quarters curved like a woman's, a

woman's skin was hardly finer, nor were a woman's wrists and hands,

though she cared for them ever so much, shaping them with files, and

polishing them with powders, more delicate than the fetlock and hoof

of this wonderful horse. Nor was any woman's eye more beautiful, nor

any woman's ears more finely shaped; and the horse's muzzle came to

such a little point that one would have been inclined to bring him

water in a tumbler. The accoutrements were all Arab; and Owen

admired the heavy bits, furnished with many rings and chains, severe

curbs, demanding the lightest handling, without being able to guess

their use. But in the desert one rides like the Arab, and it would

be ridiculous to go away to the Sahara hanging on to a snaffle like

an Irishman out hunting.

So he mounted, and the cavalcade started amid much noise and dust,

which followed it until it turned from the road into the scrub. A

heavy dew had fallen during the night, and it glittered like silver

rain, producing a slight mirage, which deceived nobody, but which

prevented Owen from seeing what the country was like, until the sun

shone out. Then he saw that they were crossing an uncultivated

rather than a sterile plain, and the word "wilderness" came up in

his mind, for the only trees and plants he saw were wildings, wild

artichokes, tall stems, of no definite colour, with hairy fruits;

rosemary, lavender and yellow broom, and half-naked bushes stripped

of their foliage by the summer heat, covered with dust; nowhere a

blade of grass--an indurated plain, chapped, rotted by stagnant

waters, burnt again by the sun. And they rode over this plain for

hours, the horses avoiding the baked earth, choosing the softer

places where there was a litter of leaves or moss. Sometimes the

cavalcade divided into twos and threes, sometimes it formed into a

little group riding to the right or left, with Owen and his dragoman

in front, Owen trying to learn Arabic from the dragoman, the lesson

interrupted continually by some new sight: by a cloud of thistledown

hovering over a great purple field, rising and falling, for there

was not wind enough to carry the seed away; by some white vapour on

the horizon, which his dragoman told him was the smoke of Arabs

clearing the scrub.

"A primitive method, and an easy one, saving the labour of billhook

and axe." About nine o'clock he saw some woods lying to the

north-west. But the horses' heads were turned eastward to avoid an arm

of a great marsh, extending northward to the horizon. It was then

that, wearying of trying to get his tongue round certain Arabic words,

he rode away from his dragoman, and tried to define the landscape as a

painter would; but it was all too vast, and all detail was lost in

the vastness, and all was alike. So, abandoning the pictorial, he

philosophised, discovering the fallacy of the old saying that we owe

everything to the earth, the mother of all. "We owe her very little.

The debt is on her side," he muttered. "It is we who make her so

beautiful, finding in the wilderness a garden and a statue in a

marble block. Man is everything." And the words put the thought into

his mind that although they had been travelling for many hours they

had not yet seen a human being, nor yet an animal. Whither the Arabs

had gone the dragoman could not tell him; he could only say they came

to this plain for the spring pasture; their summer pastures were

elsewhere, and he pointed to an old olive, brown and bent by the

wind, telling Owen it was deemed a sacred tree, to which sterile

women came to hang votive offerings. Owen reined up his horse in

front of it, and they resumed their journey, meeting with nothing

they had not met with before, unless, perhaps, a singular group of

date-palms gathered together at one spot, forerunners of the desert,

keeping each other company, struggling for life in a climate which

was not theirs.

At eleven o'clock a halt was made in the bed of a great river

enclosed within steep mudbanks, now nearly as dry as the river they

had crossed in the morning; only a few inches of turbid water, at

which a long herd of cattle was drinking when they arrived; the

banks planted with great trees, olives, tamarisks, and masticks. At

three o'clock they were again in the saddle, and they rode on,

leaving to the left an encampment (the dragoman told Owen the name of

the tribe), some wandering horses, and some camels. The camels, who

appeared to have lost themselves, did not gallop away like the

horses, but came forward and peaceably watched the cavalcade

passing, absent-minded, bored ruminants, with something always on

their minds. The sobriety of these animals astonished him. "They're

not greedy, and they are never thirsty. Of what do they remind me?"

And Owen thought for a while, till catching sight of their long

fleecy necks, bending like the necks of birds, and ending in long

flexible lips (it was the lips that gave him the clue he was

seeking), he said, "The Nonconformists of the four-footed world,"

and he told his joke to his dragoman, without, however, being able

to make him understand.

"These Arabs have no sense of humour," he muttered, as he rode away.

The only human beings he saw on that long day's journey were three

shepherds--two youths and an old man; the elder youth, standing on a

low wall, which might be Roman or Carthaginian, Turkish or Arabian

(an antiquarian would doubtless have evolved the history of four

great nations from it), watched a flock of large-tailed sheep and

black goats, and blew into his flageolet, drawing from it, not

music, only sounds without measure or rhythm, which the wind carried

down the valley, causing the sheep-dog to rise up from the rock on

which he was lying and to howl dismally. Near by the old man walked,

leaning on the arm of the younger brother, a boy of sixteen. Both

wore shepherd's garb--tunics fitting tight to the waist, large

plaited hats, and sandals cut from sheep-skin. The old man's eyes

were weak and red, and he blinked them so constantly that Owen

thought he must be blind; and the boy was so beautiful that one of

the Arabs cried out to him, in the noble form of Arab salutation:

"Hail to thee, Jacob, son of Isaac; and hail to thy father."

Owen repeated the names "Jacob!" "Isaac!" a light came into his face,

and he drew himself up in his saddle, understanding suddenly that he

had fallen out of the "Odyssey," landing in the very midst of the

Bible; for there it was, walking about him: Abraham and Isaac, the

old man willing to sacrifice his son to please some implacable God

hidden behind a cloud; Jacob selling his birthright to Esau, the

birthright of camels, sheep, and goats. And down his mind floated the

story of Joseph sold by his brethren, and that of Ruth and Boaz:

"Thy people shall be my people, thy God shall be my God," a story of

corn rather than of flocks and herds. For the sake of Boaz she would

accept Yahveh. But would he accept such a God for Evelyn's sake, and

such a brute?--always telling his people if they continued to adore

him they would be given not only strength to overcome their enemies,

but even the pleasure of dashing out the brains of their enemies'

children against the stones; and thinking of the many apocalyptic

inventions, the many-headed beasts of Isaiah, the Cherubim and

Seraphim, who were not stalwart and beautiful angels, but

many-headed beasts from Babylonia, Owen remembered that these

revolting monsters had been made beautiful in the Ægean: sullen

Astaarte, desiring sacrifice and immolation, had risen from the

waters, a ravishing goddess with winged Loves marvelling about her,

Loves with conches to their lips, blowing the glad news to the world.

"How the thought wanders!" he said, "A moment ago I was among the

abominations of Isaiah. Now I am back, if not with the Greek Venus,

'whom men no longer call the Erecine,' at all events with an

enchanting Parisian, nearly as beautiful, and more delightful--a

voluptuous goddess, laughing amid her hair, drawn less austerely

than Ingres, but much more firmly than Boucher or Fragonard... a

fragrant goddess."

And meditating with half his mind, he admired the endurance of his

horse with the other, who, though he could neither trot, nor gallop,

nor walk, could amble deliciously.

"If not a meditative animal himself, his gait conduces to

meditation," Owen said, and he continued to dream that art could

only be said to have flourished among Mediterranean peoples, until

he was roused from his reverie by his horse, who suddenly pricked up

his ears and broke into a canter. He had been travelling since six

in the morning, and it was now evening; but he was fresh enough to

prick up his ears, scenting, no doubt, an encampment, the ashes of

former fires, the litter left by some wayfarers, desert wanderers,

bedouins, Hebrews.

Owen began his dream again, and he could do so without danger, for

his horse hardly required the direction of the bridle even in the

thick wood; and while admiring his horse's sagacity in avoiding the

trees he pursued his theological fancies, an admirable stillness

gathering the while, shadows descending, unaccompanied by the

slightest wind, and no sound. Yes, a faint sound! And reigning in

his horse, he listened, and all the Arabs about him listened, to the

babble coming up through the evening--a soft liquid talking like the

splashing of water, or the sound of wings, or the mingling of both,

some language more liquid than Italian. What language was being

spoken over yonder? One of the Arabs answered, "It is the voice of

the lake."

As the cavalcade rode out of the wood the lake lay a glittering

mirror before Owen, about a mile wide; he could not determine its

length, for the lake disappeared into a distant horizon, into a

semblance of low shores, still as stagnant water, reflecting the

golden purple of the sunset, and covered with millions of waterfowl.

The multitude swimming together formed an indecisive pattern, like a

vague, weedy scum collected on the surface of a marsh. Ducks, teal,

widgeon, coots, and divers were recognisable, despite the distance,

by their prow-like heads, their balance on the water, and their

motion through it, "like little galleys," Owen said. Nearer, in the

reeds agitated with millions of unseen inhabitants, snipe came and

went in wisps, uttering an abrupt cry, going away in a short,

crooked flight and falling abruptly. In the distance he saw grey

herons and ibises from Egypt. The sky darkened, and through the dusk,

from over the hills, thousands of birds continued to arrive,

creating a wind in the poplars. Like an army marching past,

battalion succeeded battalion at intervals of a few seconds; and the

mass, unwinding like a great ribbon, stretched across the lake. Then

the mist gathered, blotting out everything, all noise ceased, and

the lake itself disappeared in the mist.

Turning in the saddle, Owen saw a hillock and five olive-trees. A

fire was burning. This was the encampment.