In the hotel gardens a sunflower watched the yellowing forest, then bent its head and died. The great cedar was deserted, and in October Morton was painting chrysanthemums on the walls of the dining-room. He called them the flowers of twilight, the flowers of the summer's twilight. Mildred watched him adding the last sprays to his bouquet of white and purple bloom. The inveigling sweetness of these last bright days entered into life, quickening it with desire to catch and detain some tinge of autumn's melancholy. All were away in the fields and the forest; and, though little of their emotion transpired on their canvases, they were moved, as were Rousseau and Millet, by the grandeur of the blasted oak and the lonely byre standing against the long forest fringes, dimming in the violet twilight. Elsie was delighted with her birch, and Cissy considered her rocks approvingly. 'You've caught the beauty of that birch,' said Cissy. 'How graceful it is in the languid air. It seems sad about something.' 'About the pine at the end of the glade,' said Elsie laughing. 'I brought the pine a little nearer. I think it composes better.' 'Yes, I think it does. You must come and see my rocks and ferns. There's one corner I don't know what to do with. But I like my oak.' 'I will come presently. I'm working at the effect; the light will have changed in another half hour.' 'I've done all I can do to mine. It would make a nice background for a hunting picture. There's a hunt to-day in the forest. Mildred and Morton are going to see the meet.' Elsie continued painting, Cissy sat down on a stone and soon lost herself in meditations. She thought about the man she was in love with; he had gone back to Paris. She was now sure that she hated his method of painting, and, finding that his influence had not been a good one, she strove to look on the landscape with her own eyes. But she saw only various painters in it. The last was Morton Mitchell, and she thought if he had been her lover she might have learnt something from him. But he was entirely taken up with Mildred. She did not like Mildred any more, she had behaved very badly to that poor little Rose Turner. 'Poor little thing, she trembles like that birch.' 'What are you saying, Cissy? Who trembles like that birch?' 'I was thinking of Rose, she seems dreadfully upset, Morton never looks at her now.' 'I think that Morton would have married her if Mildred hadn't appeared on the scene. I know he was thinking of settling down.' 'Mildred is a mystery. Her pleasure seems to be to upset people's lives. You remember poor Ralph Hoskin. He died of a broken heart. I can't make Mildred out, she tells a lot of lies. She's always talking about her virtue. But I hardly think that Morton would be as devoted to her as he is if he weren't her lover. Do you think so?' 'I don't know, men are very strange.'