Nothing happened for three days. A few of the party found that eventlessness had a faint, queer effect on their nervous systems, and the pervading scent of musk was enervating. The days were a warm monochrome. The fiery procession of the sun across the diagonal of the valley was slow, perceptible and unvaried. One might have been glad to alter it. The profound peace and happiness of the valley became even oppressive, even almost sinister for Sprot. The valley smiled ceaselessly, and, as Quentin said, there is nothing more irritating. At night, Lychnis told Ambrose, Ruby clung to her in some sort of irrational fear. Only Lord Sombrewater remained entirely unaffected. And Lychnis liked it. And Ambrose made observations in his diary. Then, on the fourth day, there blew up a storm of wind, and the clouds writhed like dragons, and the distant tiger-roar was heard as the wind stroked the cracking forests on the fells. “What music!” Lychnis listened to her emotions, her brows heavy. “Mendelssohn only,” put in Quentin. “Everything in measure here. None of your devastating German symphonies—not in these parts; even the storms are civilized—still less your incoherent Irish harps.” “I did really begin to feel,” said Terence, “that our environment was unsympathetic. I haven’t had a dream, still less a vision, since we came. And I find the Spirits of the Bamboo Forest, though they are undoubtedly present in quivering myriads, more than a trifle hard to elicit. But this is better; this is more hopeful. The wind may bring things. I will therefore retire to my tower, and keep watch for a messenger from one of those many worlds that are undoubtedly interfolded with this. If you would like to share my vigil...?” He turned his great misty eyes upon Lychnis. “I feel it coming upon me that I am to begin a new portrait of you, in those elaborate clothes, with your hair so, formally, but half-hidden in veils of bamboo leaves.” Lychnis declined. She was going out to the forest to hear the great branches cracking, she said. She and Ruby went to their bedroom to put on clothes they could walk in—mediæval hunting-clothes. “Half-hidden! You always have to keep your subject half-hidden, Terence,” mocked Quentin. “Why don’t you paint her swimming naked in a mystical bamboo-leaf sea? I should, by heaven! if I were a painter. She wouldn’t be hidden! I should swoon, painting her.” “You handle my daughter with your imagination a bit freely, Quentin,” observed Lord Sombrewater. “We are all Sages here, I think,” replied Quentin. “We can all embark on the adventures of conversation, I think, for conversation’s sake, without being horrified at what we are compelled to say in artistic justice to our theme. It is true, certainly, that your daughter raises in me exquisite lusts of the imagination. But if I want to marry her in my imagination I may, I take it, without asking her parent’s imaginary consent.”