Whether the molto bella vista ever existed remains still a subject of dispute. Peripatetica insists that it was only a pretext for leading them to a place where Gaspero intended they should lunch, but Jane, who always kicks against the philosophic pricks of the determinists, contends that she exercised a certain measure of free will in the matter. However that may be, they wound among mountain roads, by caves Gaspero said were once the dwellings of giants, by little outlying villages where old women span and wove in the doorways and young women made lace; where copper-workers sat in the street and with musical clang of little hammers beat out glittering vessels of rosy metal. They scattered flocks of goats from their path, the shaggy white bucks leaping nimbly upon the wall and staring at them with curious ironic, satyr-like glances; and far, very far up, they came upon a mountain meadow mistily shadowed by enormous gnarled olive trees—a meadow knee-deep in flowers. A meadow that was a sea of flowers, orange, golden and lemon, rippling and dimpling in the light and shade, breathed upon by the faint flying airs of those high spaces: “In Arcady, in Arcady! Where all the leaves are merry—” cried Peripatetica joyously. “Of course it’s Arcady,” said Jane, with conviction. “And we have come upon it in the Age—or perhaps the moment—of Gold. Gaspero,” she announced firmly, “we will lunch right here.” 282“But Signorina—the Vista!” protested the Wizard with a quizzical smile. It was really (Peripatetica is convinced) Gaspero’s subtle understanding of Jane’s character which led him to offer just sufficient opposition to fix her determination to stay at the very spot where he could best work his magic, for a flowing world of shadowy purple swam about them in a thousand suave folds down to a shining sea, and he could not have showed them any vista more beautiful. But why attempt to shake Jane’s pleased conviction it was really owing to her that for a few hours she and Peripatetica could truly say, “I too have lived in Arcadia.” That it was owing to her they cheerfully fed there, and lay cradled for long warm hours in that perfumed flood of flowers in happy thoughtless silence, wrapped in a fold of the Earth Mother’s—the great Demeter’s—mantle; a fold embroidered by the fine fingers of her daughter Persephone, the Opener of Flowers. That night, when the full moon rose over the silky sea, far down the horizon behind them slowly faded into the distance the ghostly silver peaks of the enchanted Land of the Older Gods. THE END 283THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM J. LOCKE “Life is a glorious thing.”—W. J. Locke “If you wish to be lifted out of the petty cares of to-day, read one of Locke’s novels. You may select any from the following titles and be certain of meeting some new and delightful friends. His characters are worth knowing.”—Baltimore Sun.