life; I can’t express it—moved in them, and words came to me.” Quentin opened his eyes like a man waking from the illumination of prayer. “O exquisite penetration of unfolding virginity! These are the pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove, and we have heard a voice from the invisible but all-pervading reality of the universe. Now, I myself formed the same conclusion with regard to the art of China in the days of my purity—that is to say, when I was about thirteen. Some echo of those far-off days came to me as I studied my dessert-plate. This band of creamy pink enamel. This domestic scene in the centre of the plate. These two girls—what ivory-textured skins! what lily-petal hands holding the battledores. If the beauty, and by consequence the virtue, of the girls of this valley is anything like so fragile——” “It is very fine ware,” put in Sir Richard. “I would like to understand their process more perfectly. Not that I am an expert in the manufacture of pottery. I wonder, by the way, if these cabinets are unlocked.” “Obviously,” replied Quentin, “since there is no capitalist system here and no police. One must lock up things when there are police. There!” He opened a cabinet and brought out a piece of pottery. “By the Virgin Mary! it lives. The cellular organization of it lives and the integument is warm. It blushes under my fingers like a woman’s cheek. We have here all that’s most precious in the world, including three maidens.” He dug Fulke in the ribs. “Let us explore the mazy building.” He led the party all over the Pavilion, discoursing in every room with infinite learning on some precious object of Chinese art. Before the ebony bed in the girls’ bedchamber he stood in an attitude of respectful adoration. Lychnis tactfully withdrew, leading Ruby. He spoke in a low voice: “And they lie there in each other’s arms, like shepherdesses in a Boucher. That precious cabinet enshrines them. My poor Fulke! To have seen, and to have no chance of possessing. But come away from this holy place. It is not for the likes of us.” They withdrew, Fulke suppressing a groan. Finally, in a sort of study, they found a cabinet which contained what appeared to resemble some kind of listening-in apparatus. “Now,” said Frew-Gaff, “this is really remarkable.” 16 When evening fell, warm and flower-scented, they emerged, in their summer-gorgeous robes, from the vermilion-tiled Pavilion, and filed down towards the Lake. They stood on a lacquer bridge at the head of a creek and looked silently across the sheen of water. “Look!” whispered Lychnis, “the Rock!” It seemed to float before them, in a vapour of evening. The middle and upper reaches of the sky were clear and summer-foreboding, but clouds loomed up from behind the mountains beyond the opposite shore, and opened like large summer flowers.