That same afternoon Maradick finished “To Paradise.” He read it in the room of the minstrels with the sun beating through the panes in pools of gold on to the floor, the windows flung wide open, and a thousand scents and sounds flooding the air. The book had chimed in curiously with the things that were happening to him; perhaps at any other time, and certainly a year ago, he would have flung the book aside with irritation at its slow movement and attenuated action. Now it gave him the precisely correct sensation; it was the atmosphere that he had most effectually realised during these last weeks suddenly put for him clearly on to paper. Towards the end of the book there was this passage: “And indeed Nature sets her scene as carefully as any manager on our own tiny stage; we complain discordantly of fate, and curse our ill-luck when, in reality, it is because we have disregarded our setting that we have suffered. Passing lights, whether of sailing ships or huddled towns, murmuring streams heard through the dark but not seen, the bleating of countless sheep upon a dusky hill, are all, with a thousand other formless incoherent things, but sign-posts to show us our road. And let us, with pressing fingers, wilfully close our ears and blind our eyes, then must we suffer. Changes may come suddenly upon a man, and he will wonder; but let him look around him and he will see that he is subject to countless other laws and orders, and that he plays but a tiny rôle in a vast and moving scene.” He rose and stretched his arms. He had not for twenty years felt the blood race through his veins as it did to-day. Money? Office stools? London? No; Romance, Adventure. He would have his time now that it had come to him. He could not talk to his wife about it; she would not understand; but Mrs. Lester—— The door opened suddenly. He turned round. No one had ever interrupted him there before; he had not known that anyone else had discovered the place, and then he saw that it was Lester himself. He came forward with that curious look that he often had of seeing far beyond his immediate surroundings. He stared now past the room into the blue and gold of the Cornish dusk; the vague misty leaves of some tree hung, a green cloud, against the sky, two tiny glittering stars shone in the sky above the leaves, as though the branches had been playing with them and had tossed them into the air. Then he saw Maradick. “Hullo! So you’ve discovered this place too?” He came towards him with that charming, rather timid little smile that he had. “I found it quite by chance yesterday, and have been absolutely in love with it——” “Yes,” said Maradick, “I’ve known it a long time. Curiously enough, we were here last year and I never found it.” Then he added: “I’ve just finished your book. May I tell you how very much I’ve enjoyed it? It’s been quite a revelation to me; its beauty——”