Helen rolled on her back and went floating with the clouds. While she merely watched them, she thought they kept a level course, but to go with them was like riding on a swollen sea, and as she rose and fell in slow and splendid curves, she discovered differences of colour and quality in a medium which seemed invariable from below. She swooped downwards like a bird on steady wings and saw the moor lifting itself towards her until she anticipated a shock; she was carried upwards through a blue that strained to keep its colour, yet wearied into a pallor which almost let out the stars. She saw the eye of a hawk as its victims knew it, and for a time she kept pace with a lark and saw the music in his throat before he uttered it. Joy escaped her in a little sound, and then she felt that the earth was solid under her. Daniel and Rupert were still discussing the great things which did not matter, and idly she marvelled at their capacity for argument and quarrel; but she realized that for Rupert, at least, this was a sport equivalent to her game of sailing with the clouds, and when she turned to look at him, she saw him leaning against his heather bush, wearing the expression most annoying to an antagonist, and flicking broken heather stalks at Daniel's angular and monumental knees. "You talk of the mind," Rupert said, "as though it were the stomach." "I do," Daniel said heavily. "And your stomach at that! Bulk and fat foods--" "This is merely personal," Daniel said, "and a sign that you are being beaten, as usual. I was going to say that in a day of fuller knowledge we shall be able to predict the effect of emotions with the same certainty--" "With which you now predict the effect of Eliza's diet. God forbid! Anyhow, I shall be dead. Come on." Daniel stood up obediently, for they had now reached the point where they always rose and walked off side by side, in the silence of amusement and indignation. There was a rustling in the heather, and she heard no more of them. Then the thud of approaching footsteps ran along the ground, and she sat up to see Miriam with Zebedee. "I went fishing," Miriam said, "and this is what I caught." He smiled at Helen a little uncertainly. "I had some time to spare, and I thought you wouldn't mind if I came up here. You used to let me." "I've always wanted you to come back," she said with her disconcerting frankness. "You may sit down," Miriam said, "and go on telling us about your childhood. Helen, we'd hardly said how d'you do when he began on that. It's a sure sign of age." "I am old." "Oh," Helen murmured. "No." She dropped back into her bed. She could see Zebedee's grey coat sleeve and the movements of his arm as he found and filled his pipe, and by moving her head half an inch she saw his collar and his lean cheek.