In truth Iden built for all time, and not for the little circumstance of the hour. His gate was meant to last for years, rain and shine, to endure any amount of usage, to be a work of Art in itself. His gate as the tangible symbol of his mind--was at once his strength and his folly. His strength, for it was such qualities as these that made Old England famous, and set her on the firm base whereon she now stands--built for all Time. His folly, because he made too much of little things, instead of lifting his mind higher. If only he could have lived three hundred years the greater world would have begun to find out Iden and to idolize him, and make pilgrimages from over sea to Coombe Oaks, to hear him talk, for Iden could talk of the trees and grass, and all that the Earth bears, as if one had conversed face to face with the great god Pan himself. But while Iden slumbered with his head against the panel--think, think, think--this shallow world of ours, this petty threescore years and ten, was slipping away. Already Amaryllis had marked with bitterness at heart the increasing stoop of the strong back. Iden was like the great engineer who could never build a bridge, because he knew so well how a bridge ought to be built. "Such a fuss over a mess of a gate," said Mrs. Iden, "making yourself ridiculous: I believe that carpenter is just taking advantage of you. Why can't you go into town and see your father?--it would be a hundred pounds in your pocket"--as it would have been, no doubt. If only Mrs. Iden had gone about her lecture in a pleasanter manner perhaps he would have taken her advice. Resting upon the brown timber in the grass Amaryllis and Amadis could just see a corner of the old house through the spars of the new gate. Coombe Oaks was a grown house, if you understand; a house that had grown in the course of many generations, not built to set order; it had grown like a tree that adapts itself to circumstances, and, therefore, like the tree it was beautiful to look at. There were windows in deep notches, between gables where there was no look-out except at the pears on the wall, awkward windows, quite bewildering. A workman came to mend one one day, and could not get at it. "Darned if I ever seed such a crooked picter of a house!" said he. A kingfisher shot across above the golden surface of the buttercups, straight for the brook, moving, as it seemed, without wings, so swiftly did he vibrate them, that only his azure hue was visible, drawn like a line of peacock blue over the gold. In the fitness of things Amaryllis ought not to have been sitting there like this, with Amadis lost in the sweet summer dream of love. She ought to have loved and married a Launcelot du Lake, a hero of the mighty arm, only with the income of Sir Gorgius Midas: that is the proper thing. But the fitness of things never comes to pass--everything happens in the Turkish manner.