“Delicious object!” cried Quentin. “Totter, rather, to these arms and the refuge of this beard, which is indeed a better beard than any countryman of yours can produce. For the beard in these parts is scanty,” he explained, turning to Ambrose, “as you will undoubtedly record.” Then, seizing the girl by the skirt of her jacket, he turned her about and pinched her chin and her yellow cheeks. She screamed. At once from the shadowy houses there was a swift, silent arrival of yellow-skinned relations, and the rest of the party drew together while Quentin, with sparkling eyes and wide smile, faced the crowd. But immediately the voice of Such-a-one came from the leading boat, suavely rising and falling, and once more with mysterious effect, for the gathering dispersed, not, this time, without conveying, through their expressionless faces, some hint of a threat like the threat of geese. Lord Sombrewater sprang out of his boat. “This is quite enough,” he said, with acid authority. “Lychnis! Ruby!” He pointed, and they returned to their window. “Funny,” remarked Quentin to Ambrose. “Your Chinaman has some talisman in his tongue. This will be useful should one of you go too far.” 12 Late in the afternoon they disembarked, and Such-a-one led them by a steep road through a village to a solitary inn halfway up the mountain. The moon came up behind the mountain, and soft hues and scents of the spring night stole into the sky. A warm, stirring silence. The inn slept, and Ambrose kept watch in the road—before him a trembling emptiness of sky, and the fantastic roof of the inn, and a candle burning behind the paper blind. The blind moved, the candle was extinguished, and Lychnis and Ruby leaned out between the bamboo shoots. They threw him down flowers, whispering good-night. Then silence, breathing, scent-laden. Ambrose was arranging the events of the day in his mind for purposes of record. While his mind worked his eyes were fixed on the moon sailing in a clump of bamboo beyond the inn, like a swan among reeds. His meditations were disturbed, suddenly, by an outbreak of imprecation in his near neighbourhood. It was Fulke. The language he used was like thunder and earthquake among those silent mountains, and seemed to Ambrose to give a distinctly reddish tinge to the sky. He whistled, and Fulke paused like a nightingale disturbed in his song. Then with a “That you, Ambrose? My God!” he resumed his theme. “What is it?” asked Ambrose. “What is it! I’ll tell you, so that you put it down in the records, on parchment, with tender, fragrant little illustrations. What is it! Only this. I asked Lord Sombrewater this evening if I might propose to Lychnis. Lychnis!” He groaned at the name, at the stolen taste of a pleasure never to be his. “Oh yes?” “Oh yes! You slug-flesh! You snail-guts! Don’t you want to know what he answered?”