“The body,” continued Blackwood, “is merely an involuted skin, highly specialized at various points, and capable of sensations, especially tactile sensations, which some—as, for instance, Quentin, who has not received enlightenment—consider desirable. Man, in brief, is nothing but a piece of skin capable, in contact with another skin, of a supreme sensation which results in the establishment of a third sensational skin. Of the behaviour of these skins and their obscene accompaniments, and of the cunning fluids by which, for their extraordinary object of perpetuation, the said skins are cleverly kept in what is curiously known as health, I have a considerable knowledge. The two maiden skins, therefore, would be in a position to receive expert assistance should they fall ill and inexplicably wish to recover.” “Mr. Blackwood!” began the three ladies at once. But Lord Sombrewater put an end to the discussion. “We’ll settle all that presently,” he said; and they heard in his voice their doom, and perhaps (though Ambrose was not able to find out whether their thoughts were precise) the doom of their daughters. 9 Ambrose found an opportunity, during the afternoon, to ascertain from the two girls their views as to the expedition. He had gone ashore with them, at the instance of Lychnis, and they had climbed to the top of a humped green hill so as to survey the country. There they stood, under a plum-tree in blossom, protected, as Lychnis observed, by cousins of Terence’s messengers from Paradise. Lychnis herself was in a fragile plum-colored frock, out of compliment to them, and her red-haired fellow was in willow-green. Behind, between two contortions of cliff, lay the sea. Far away, across the wrinkled and fissured hills, there were mountains with the unmelted snows of winter lying on their tops like petals of narcissus. The afternoon was spring-like, and there seemed to Ambrose to be a fragrance of lilies; but whether it came from distant fields or whether the girls were scented with it, he could not quite decide. But he suddenly remembered that the Chinaman had spoken of a great lake of water-lilies beyond the mountains of the interior. Lychnis stood on the hill with her hands clasped behind her, frowning at the snows. “Is that where we are going?” she asked. “The indications point that way, I believe. Does it amuse you to go?” “Oh yes! And really, if we don’t find something new, something strange, there, I think I shall die. Shall we perhaps discover some secret of life there, do you suppose?” “You mean?”