The car came to a stop at a switch before a rustic gate, and they got off together. It occurred to Leigh that possibly he had been a little short with Emmet, somewhat unsympathetic with his practical and industrial interests. If this were so, it was merely because he realised the uselessness of explaining the peculiar intoxication of his mood, for he suspected that the other would regard such emotions as fit only for women and poets. "You might come for a walk with me," he suggested. "The exercise would do you good." Emmet hesitated, as if he considered the proposition seriously, looking down the track at the approaching car for which their own was waiting. "No," he said slowly. "I must be getting back to town, and there's one of the boys on this car that I want to see." "Some other time, then," said Leigh. "There are n't any bandits in these woods, are there?" "You 'd better keep your gun handy," Emmet answered. "Well, take care of yourself." Leigh had by this time reached the wicket gate, where he turned a moment to catch Emmet's friendly wave of the hand. A few steps more, and the woods enclosed him like a wall. He heard the diminishing buzz of the returning car with a sense of relief and escape, for he was pleased that his invitation had not been accepted. In his mind lingered a feeling that he and Emmet had not been able to meet this afternoon quite as before, but the feeling vanished with the disappearance of the car, leaving him merely glad of the solitude. Soon he came to a spring, a placid basin of water canopied by an artificial grotto of rock, and kneeling down he gazed intently at his own reflection. But no thought of Narcissus, or of Horace's fountain of Bandusia, intervened to substitute literary memories for the reality of sensation; he was too genuine a lover of nature to interpret it in the terms of letters. Down at the bottom of the pool the water welled up in slow puffs, as if the ground were panting, stirring dead sticks and withered leaves, and presently, in the spokes of light that radiated from the reflection of his head, he descried a frog resting motionless below him. He disturbed the water, so transparent that he could not tell when his fingers would enter it, and the frog was gone like a grey streak, leaving little swirls like dust where its feet had touched the bottom in its flight. The only thought that floated through his mind as he knelt there was one concerning the infinitely small in nature. The place, he knew, was swarming with unseen life, creatures compared with which the frog was a devouring monster of colossal proportions; and he reflected that the immeasurable spaces of the sky were not more wonderful than they.