They sat on Fanshaw's overcoat, their backs against a rock. Behind them were patches of sprouting emerald grass in the clefts of rocks and rows of shingled cottages, shutters still fast for the winter. At their feet the surf hissed and rattled on the pebbly beach. The sea was slate-grey with an occasional whitecap. From the deep indigo line of the horizon cumulous clouds steamed up heavy and flushed with spring, with a hint of rain in their broad, shadowy bases. In the back of his mind Fanshaw was remembering the scalloped wavelets and the blown hair and the curves like grey rose petals of Botticelli's waveborn Venus. What was the Latin that went it: Cras amet qui numquam amavit...? No, how ridiculous. "What did you think of his father, Fanshaw?" "O, impossible, completely impossible." "I wonder ..." They were silent a long time looking out to sea. Fanshaw leaned back with halfclosed eyes, conscious of Nan beside him, felt vague rosy contours, slender and leaping like the figures on a black-figure vase, dancing within him. He was very happy. "Nan, I wish I could paint." "Who's stopping you?" "I suppose that sort of thing is pretty futile nowadays ... It would have been fine, though, to have been born in a time ..." "Wouldn't Wenny have been angry hearing you say that?" They turned towards each other and laughed. "Wenny could have done anything ... Think that all his life should be gone, like a glass of wine poured on the ground." "Such a Biblical metaphor." Nan laughed deep in her throat. "Maybe you and I are the ground, Fanshaw, who can tell?" "Tares and thistles probably ... Don't you wish we were the lilies of the field?" "That makes me think of the Reverend Jonas ... I wonder if all of poor old Wenny's troubles didn't come from that. Wasn't it a case of ... what's the quotation about the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge?" "Don't you think it's a little vulgar to know the Bible so well?" They both laughed. Down the coast the sun had burst through the clouds. The spreading rays brightened on the sea to great patches of heaving silver. Far out the sails of a schooner shone out suddenly like mother of pearl. "O, isn't it superb here this afternoon, Nan? And think that I didn't want to come." "I like it ... Suppose we stayed forever." "After all the hideousness of this Spring?" "Let's not talk about it... I won't remember it. What's today?" "I think it's the twentieth." "Well, for me it's May first. I won't be cheated of my spring. I'm just going to begin it all over again. And practice! Fanshaw, if you only knew how I was going to practice!" "Look down the coast now ... With the dark clouds and the rays from the sun and the sailboat and everything, isn't it exactly like one of those funny old English engravings? Seascapes they used to call them. Even to the musty color."