“By the Virgin Mother, how beautiful!” Quentin sang out, and chased them down the rice-field like a great swaying peacock. He caught Lychnis first, as he came up with her among the bamboos, by her streaming hair and forced her head back, so that all her face and throat were exposed to him. She saw the red, smiling lips in the frizzy beard pouting a suggestion of kisses, and turned her face sharply aside. “The unburnt child dreads the fire!” He grinned his contempt at her and gave a vigorous tug at the handful of amber hair. “Rich, ungathered coral! Sweet, shadowy, unentered cavern of a mouth! Unfleshed teeth! Little tiger that has not yet tasted a man! Little fool!” She stared soberly up at him. “Out of the strong cometh an excess of sweetness, too luscious pomegranate of a man!” He grinned and led her back, still in captivity, to the boats, annexing the slow Ruby by the way, and as he drove his pair through the field the labourers began to follow and gather in round them, with a kind of singing chatter, like a chorus. Fulke, who was also on the bank, a little shamefaced because he lacked the spontaneity of Quentin and the two girls to run, started forward; but when the little crowd came near the boats, Such-a-one raised his voice to such effect that they sped across the field and vanished like rabbits among the bamboos. “Odd, that,” said Quentin. “What is his secret charm? The authority lay not in the tone, but in the words. Or did he perform a miracle—The Manifestation and Evanishment of the Blue Men?” “I believe anything, now,” Lychnis replied. “Every minute I hope to see that dragon flying across the hills.” Then there was a cry from Terence and a gesture like the waving of a banner. “He wants to go on,” said Quentin. “He’s losing sight of his Peach-blossom friends.” So the boats began to move slowly ahead, those four, with Ambrose, following along the bank; and at everything Quentin said the girls laughed, encouraging the flow of his spontaneity. Presently they came to a village shadowed among huge rocks and trees. Variegated ducks surrounded them and a flock of geese steadily testified with outstretched necks to some difficult truth. The village was sombre, mysterious and deserted, but a girl was searching for some object among the pebbles at the water’s edge. She looked up, startled, at the approach of five gorgeous strangers like ghostly mandarins and their ladies, and began to make off with little tottering steps.