The first time we see them they are in far eastern seas. Lychnis, who is Lord Sombrewater’s daughter, Ruby Frew-Gaff and her father (the tall, polished Sir Richard, with pale blue eyes, Lord Sombrewater’s chief physicist) are in the motor-launch with the light-bearded and bard-like Terence Fitzgerald and Ambrose himself. Something had gone wrong with the pelagic trawls that they used for capturing plants out of the ocean. It seems to them a rather strange and other-worldly ocean, like a sea in a picture, or on a vase. It is afternoon. There is a magical warm scent in the wind, as if they were near some land of delicate spring. Terence, the poet-painter-seer, is riding in the bows, but his soul is afloat. Sir Richard is busy with the apparatus, and the two girls, who have stolen a forbidden plunge in the sea, are clinging to the sides of the launch like wet sea-snails. The ship, into which the Sages have committed the weight of their philosophy, the _Floating Leaf_, painted the colour of the bamboo, heaves gently a quarter of a mile off on waves of a dark liquid green, which is compared with the green of some claret glasses they used, and as the afternoon wears on the sky becomes the same colour. Ambrose, as usual, takes occasion to note some details. He mentions the longitude, the latitude, the depth, and the temperature at various levels as registered by the deep-sea thermometer. In addition, he mentions some details with regard to the two girls; for instance, that their arms and legs (bloodless, because of the cold) make changing lights with their wet, plum-coloured bodies, and the patterns move rhythmically. There is no doubt which of the two he prefers. At least, whenever he describes them he gives Lychnis more space, possibly because she is far more complex in her nature and difficult to describe. He finds a key to the two girls in all their features. Ruby is red-haired, well-developed and dimpled. Her mouth is described as full and red, and (for those who have desires that way) of the kind which, more than any other that he has seen, Ambrose supposes might be thought kissable—that is to say, for an upstanding and not too subtle lover. Lychnis is called, amongst other things, flower-like or spritish. He speaks of a flower-like face, with some trace on it of spritish and fairy passion. Her mouth seems to arouse thoughts of a non-sensual order—in himself, that is, for he records a remark of the Sage Quentin that to kiss Lychnis on the lips would be to find heaven through the flames of sensation. But Ambrose asks, would a man want to maul the body of a primrose with his mouth? In writing of the afternoon under description, he takes opportunity to point out a relation between their minds and their physique. Ruby, with reddish hair and fine shining body, travels tirelessly in the sea like some fabulous, ocean-going fish, and she is not variable in her moods; but Lychnis slithers and plays in the fields of the sea fawn-like, and then she is