“It is a pretty point,” said Lord Sombrewater tartly; for, where Lychnis was concerned, even though a Sage, he would have put restrictions on the art of conversation. The girls came back, dressed for the excursion. “I shall accompany you,” he said. “And I,” said Sir Richard. “And I,” said Quentin and Sprot. “And I,” said Fulke, “if I may.” Ambrose, naturally, joined himself to their party, as likely to provide more material for description. They set off, leaving only Blackwood and Terence Fitzgerald behind. An hour’s march, mostly along the course of a stream that ran to the Lake, brought them out of the jewel-like, smooth-surfaced and quaint-conceited scenery, among which the Lotus Lake and the pavilions lay, into scenery of a wilder description. Quentin was walking with Lychnis, Lord Sombrewater and Ambrose. “Terence should be here,” he remarked. “This is unfinished; this is romantic.” “But a bit wizardous,” said Lychnis. “You would scarcely expect to meet one of his fair-haired Lohengrins—not among these oddly twisted pines and misshapen rocks. Some strange, gnarled old man, perhaps, with a staff—some very still old man, with a wrinkled, wicked smile, like a bit of the scenery suddenly living and peering at you.” “The mountain air is very bracing,” observed Lord Sombrewater, “and the wind fortifies me exceedingly; but for a man who makes a regular habit of six cigars a day the pace is beginning to tell. So much loose rock about, isn’t there?” “As for me,” said Quentin, “I am energy, I am vitality itself. I could tread the mountains flat. When we get up there on the crags I shall breathe in the streaming clouds and blow them out again in your faces. I shall fill my chest with the atmosphere and leave you all gasping for breath. You will entreat me for life, and I shall give it—on terms.” “I don’t need air,” replied Lychnis. “I subsist on the æther.” “You are the æther,” he answered, “or whatever medium there is on which all things are founded. Without you....” At this point she deftly skipped out of earshot—or, to be more exact, with Ambrose, nearly out of earshot. “Without you,” he continued, to the wild, surrounding forest—“without you we should not subsist at all. There would be neither matter to desire cleavage with you, nor spirit to imagine the immortality of love.” “Your knowledge of the bawdy literature of the Middle Ages is more profound than your physics,” interrupted Sir Richard. “I create my physics, as per necessity, to conform with my imagined world, like God,” he retorted. Sir Richard smiled, in his courteous, grave way. “I confine my observation to the world which has been created by the distinguished colleague whom you mention. I find there traces of the existence of consistency, order, law, and nothing beyond that, but those traces lead me confidently to suppose that in due course we shall find the whole mechanism to fall out pat.”