"Why, then, the rose is still red to-day as it was yesterday, and still sweet, sweet in its life and sweet in its death. And a new one is on the way. Who are you to talk about God Whom you do not and cannot understand? Talk about the things that you see, that is your business. Smell the scent of the rose, pick it, love it, worship it. Are you mad?" "God is silent," he reiterated sullenly. "You see," she flashed instantly back. "But the mind matters. It's the first principle of philosophy. You can't get away from that." She stopped and lay a hand upon his arm. "Listen," she said in a new voice. A lark was singing somewhere in the far blue empyrean. "Look," she said. The wide open country of field and coppice and lane lay spread before them. And so they stood awhile. "Paul," she went on presently, "it's too lovely for you and me to spoil. Let the priest and the philosopher go their own ways. It's their vocation; perhaps they must, poor souls. Meanwhile, the beauty of the world is beyond argument. God!" (She spoke softly and rather wonderingly.) "God! Oh, I know nothing of God. Perhaps He is not, perhaps He is. The God they talk about, anyway, is not here. But the earth is here, light and colour are here, beauty is here, and beauty is enough for you to sing and for me to paint, all our days." Paul looked about him with eyes that had grown wider with a new amazement as she spoke. "Oh," he said as softly as she, "I see, I see." "I knew you would," she said, and dropped her hand. "But why did I never see it before?" he asked softly. She shrugged her shoulders, smiling at him. "Let's go," she said. They walked down to Steyning by the steep path that drops over the hill and skirts the big bosom of the Down. Paul plucked sprays of leaves, laughed, swung his stick, sang. She laughed back at him. "Madcap," she said. "Oh, I know. I'm mad. No, I'm not. But I have been mad, you know. But, I say, you must teach me more. We must talk about this. Will you?" "Yes. But you don't need teaching, you know. You're a poet. You'll teach." "I know what I am," he cried, stopping suddenly, "I know what I am!" "What?" she queried, amused. "I'm the blind beggar-man. 'One thing I know: once I was blind, but now I see.' Remember?" She nodded at him, sensing something of the old evangelical years in his quotation. "Oh, it's wonderful! Heavens, what a poem! No: I'll write a play about it. You see it, don't you? How was he made to see, eh, how?" She laughed outright. "There you are! I don't know. How?" "Why, clay touched his eyes, common clay--and he saw! You understand: it was just common clay that he had been walking upon, blind as a bat, for all his days. And he saw!" She saw the parable, grave all at once. "Paul," she said, "I told you a moment ago that you would teach."