She sat in the grass with the tall ox-eyes nodding at her elbow and looked at him from under her hat with a little eased sigh. This, after the dust of the journey, of the day, of her life, was bliss. She prepared herself for this bliss, deliberately, as she did everything. She was too poor and too hungry to be wasteful of her happiness: she must have every crumb. Therefore she had looked first at herself, critically, with her trained eye, fingering the frill of her blouse, flinging a scatter of skirt across her dusty city feet, lest her poverty should jar his thoughts of her. Then she looked at him. She saw him for a moment with undazzled eyes, the blue sky enriched with clouds behind him. She was saying to herself—‘I’m not a fool. I can see straight. I know what he is. He’s just an ordinary man in a hot, black suit. He stoops, I suppose. He’s worn out with work. He’ll never be young again. And there’s nothing particular about him. Then what makes me like him? But I do. I do. He has only to turn and smile at me——’ Then he turned and smiled at her, and it seemed to her that the glamour of the gilded day passed over and into him as he smiled, glorifying him so that she caught her breath at his beauty. She knew her happiness. She knew herself and him. He was the sum of the blue sky and green, green grass, and the shining waters and the flowers with their sweet smell, and the singing birds and the hum of the little things of the air. All beauty was summed up in him: he was food to her and sunshine and music: he was her absolute good: and she thought that someone ought to see that his socks were mended properly, for there was a great ladder down one ankle, darned with wrong-coloured wool. “Well?” She shut the book. “I like it,” said the Baxter girl stubbornly. Mr. Flood twisted uneasily in his seat. “Oh, pretty, of course. Of course it’s pleasant enough in a way. But Madala oughtn’t to be pretty. Think of the stuff she _can_ do.” “But can’t you see,” Miss Howe broke in, “how it parodies the slush and sugar school?” Anita shook her head. “She used another manner when she was ironical. I wish you were right. Oh, you may be—I must consider—but I’m afraid that she is in earnest. That phrase now—‘The green, green grass,’ (why double the adjective?) ‘the shining waters, the singing birds’—pitiful! And that anti-climax—‘He was her absolute good: and she thought that someone ought to see that his socks were mended properly.’ I ask you—is it art?” “Not as serious work, of course,” said Miss Howe, “but——” “I wish I could think so,” said Anita. “Well, I wish I could do it,” said the Baxter girl. “What do you say, Jenny?” But it had brought back the country to me. It had brought back home. I hadn’t anything to say to them.