For a moment she was minded to content herself with all the buttercups on earth to gather, and to go no further that day; but staring down the dazzling slope, her eyes rested once more upon the pleasant darkness of the goal for which she had been bound. Among the nearer tree trunks were stripes and chequerings of blue--the blue that is lovelier than the sea, the one blue in the world to the flower-lover. At once, indifferently, she left the buttercups to Nicholas Nye and hurried on and into the wood. There were hyacinths everywhere, hyacinths by the million. It was as if the winds had torn her robes from the faint, spring sky, and had flung them to earth, and she now bent above them naked and shivering. Alwynne wandered from patch to patch in an ecstasy of delight. As usual, her pleasure shaped itself into exclamations, phrases, whole sentences of the letters she would write to Clare Hartill of her experiences. If only she could have Clare with her, she thought, to see and hear and touch and smell--to share the loveliness she was enjoying. Her thoughts flew to Italy, to their crowded month of beautiful sights together. She laughed--she would discard all those memories for love of this present vision.... If only Clare could see it.... She could never describe it properly ... adjectives welled up in her mind and dispersed again, like bubbles in a glass of water. The stalks and the hoarse ring of the hyacinth bells fascinated her. Clare was forgotten. She began to pick for the sake of picking. The hot silence of early afternoon lay upon tree and bird and air. Alwynne, moving from blue clump to blue clump, grew ashamed of the rustle of her dress and the scrunch of twigs and soaked leaves beneath her feet, and trod softly; even her own calm breathing sounded too loudly for the perfect peace of the place and the hour. She picked steadily, greedily--she had never before had as many flowers as she wanted, and there was inexpressible pleasure in filling her arms till she could hold no more; yet, some twenty minutes later, as she straightened herself at last, a little giddily, and looked about her over the pile of azure bells, there was no sign of bareness, for all she had gathered; she still stood to her knees in a lake of blue and green and gold.