For it seemed to me to lead like a ray straight into the blinding heart of the Sun of Life. The mind blinked in its attempt to follow it; I believe I actually passed my hand over my eyes as if to shut out a physical dazzling. I have said a little, a very little, about Derwent Rose's books; but how if they, foursquare and strongly-built as they were, were merely external things, well enough in their way, but clogged in the gross and unwieldy medium through which his central fire and power torturedly struggled? How if a more essential beauty should presently appear, free of these trammels of process, independent of acquirement and painful lore, dissociated from performance--shining, self-sufficient, its mere existence its own justification and law? "Every morning of my life," he had once said, "I've tried to wake up as if that was the first day of the world." Was he now on the way to his fulfilment? Was that first morning actually about to dawn for him? Was an early sun about to rise on a creature _not_ ready-made, _not_ pre-instructed, unfettered by the prejudice of a single word, but man given to all understanding, man at the moment of his perfection, man liberated, and without a name or foothold in the human world? A pretty speculation, I say, for a humdrum old gentleman going home to luncheon! Luncheon over, I took a liqueur with Alec in the pergola. The lattice of shadow flecked the ascending smoke from his pipe. "By the way, what became of you last night? You didn't go on to the Casino, did you?" he said. "No. I took a walk." "I heard you come in. The others had only just gone to bed. And of course Jennie was dog-tired and went upstairs with a headache." "Well, she's coming for a walk with me this afternoon." "Then for goodness' sake take her somewhere quiet. It isn't my idea of a holiday that you have to take a rest-cure after it." I laughed. "I'll look after her. But when I'm with Jennie I like as many people as possible to see me with Jennie." "Then tell her that and shake her out of herself, you old humbug. Hanged if I'd trust her with you if you were a few years younger." "You'll have to trust her with somebody presently." "Plenty of time for that yet," Alec grunted. "I've got my eye on it all right.... Well, if you're going out I'm going to have forty of the best. Watch me fade away----" He proceeded to "fade away," while the shadows crept over the ascending smoke from his pipe on the table. On this occasion, however, I was content to forego my pride in being seen with Jennie by my side. Just a quiet cliff-path not too far away would do. There is much to be said for a quiet cliff-path when a young woman feels the first sweet trouble at her heart.