"Yes, the vision of a dream," he said to himself. "Only another of those thousand exquisite things which belong to the language of symbol, and possess, alas! no tally in reality--reality, that is, as most of us hide-bound victims of conventionality are destined to know it."--He laughed a little grimly.--"Reality, as we know it, being precisely the biggest illusion of all!" He watched the fading stars, the deepening rose and gold of day, above the woods and lawns, the black cypresses and white statues upon the northern boundary of the Italian garden. Starlings chattered joyously from the gutters under the eaves; and then swept down, with a rush of passing wings, on to the grass. A keeper, gun on shoulder, with a busy, little, black cocking-spaniel, and a long-limbed, red, Irish setter behind him, crossed the rough downward slope of the park; and the wide, blue-grey landscape began to grow definite, to assert itself right away up to the horizon. The earth seemed to awake with a quiet smile from the kindly sleep of night. Laurence drank in his fill of the moist, sharp air. "Poor dear Virginia!" he said suddenly. And it was probably the very first time in her whole life that this popular, admirably finished, and much admired young lady had ever excited pity. After breakfast Laurence set forth to visit his clerical correspondent, and strive to ease the latter's conscience while refusing his request. The rectory, distant about three-quarters of a mile, stood on the rising ground across the valley, backed by a fringe of high-lying woods. The church, a small but very perfect example of Norman architecture, closely adjoined the house. There were good details of carving about the narrow, round-headed windows of the chancel, and the low, heavy arch of the porch--the floor of which was sunk several steps below the level of the churchyard. The tower, square and solid, but little higher than the roof of the nave, was surmounted by a squat, shingled spire. It struck Laurence as a calm, self-contained, little building, on which the centuries had set but slight mark of decay. The churchyard, too--shadowed by a few ancient yew-trees--was singularly peaceful, full for the most part of unnamed, grass-grown graves. Death, seen thus, had nothing awful, nothing repulsive, about it--quiet "rest after toil," it amounted to no more than that.