It was during the following morning that the gorge began to open out, as the mountain range through which they had passed declined into a broken litter of jade-green hills, and they saw ahead of them the first glimpses of the Peach-blossom Valley. They called it the Peach-blossom Valley then because the journey came to an end there, Terence having received the necessary intimation; but Ambrose tries over some other names, as Willow Valley, and Valley of Emerald Hills, and Valley of Blue Pines. They were so moved, it seems, by the composed beauty of the scene that met their eyes as they left the mild opening of the ravine that for a time they forgot each other’s existence and lived alone in the delicate solitude of that dreamy landscape. The stream, deep and slow, wound between willows, and through the willow-screen they saw verdant lawns with a fleeting glimpse of deer. Beyond, there were orchards of cherry, peach and plum, so that the valley seemed full of low-drifting clouds, white and pink; above the clouds gleamed the smooth emerald of the hills, the blue pines and quaint outcroppings of jade-hued rock. Birds sang. The stream was fed by little tributaries that murmured among the lawns. Tributaries and stream were spanned by bridges of lacquer and here, among groves of bamboo, was the yellow-tiled roof of a pavilion, and there, sticking up out of the peach-blossom foam, a sunlit pagoda or a porcelain tower; and once, on the verandah of a pavilion by the water, they saw a figure seated in meditation, and once an angler under the willows. “We are in water-colour land,” said Quentin. “This valley is done on silk. I fear you others are too gross-minded to subsist here for long.” It was a landscape of unrivalled delicacy and refined distinction, a tone-subtlety of pale pink and blue, amber and apple-green, with harmonious notes of red and, in the hazy sky, of yellow. A soft wind fanned them up-stream. The valley widened continually, and the channel of the stream became lost in the first shimmering stretches of a lagoon. Now on either side they saw other valleys opening out, and beyond them glimpses of frowning pine-wood under azure and jade-brown crags. Azalea flamed on the hillsides. Ahead of them the arm of the lagoon on which they were sailing was studded with emerald islets, and the oyster-shell rocks rose out of seas of lilies. The hills toppled curiously, and in the strange perspective the distant mountains seemed to zigzag and stagger a little—not, indeed, out of harmony with the general effect of something artificial, composed and deliberately fantastic in a scene which might have proceeded from the mind of a classic artist.