the world at my feet! Lean over and look at yourself, Finch."
Finch peered into the pool, as he had done a thousand times. "Mostly nose," he grumbled.
Leigh chattered on for a while, but soon the coolness of the ravine penetrated him. There had been a dew almost as heavy as a rain. Even now moisture fell from the tips of leaves in clear drops like the first scatter of a shower. While Finch was absent the Michaelmas daisies had come into bloom. Their starry flowers, varying from the deepest purple to the blue of the September sky, hung like an amethyst mist above the banks of the stream. The leaves of fern and bracken showed a chill sheen, as though they had been cut from fine metal. The clear delicate sunlight had not yet dispelled the heavy night odours of the ravine.
"I wonder," said Leigh, "whether your brother should come here this morning. It doesn't seem quite the right spot for anyone with lung trouble."
"He's over that. At any rate, he looks pretty fit. Our doctor says that he needed rest and good food more than anything. Still," he looked dubiously at the wet boards of the bridge, "it does seem rather damp for him."
"Perhaps we had better go to him." Leigh would have liked to tell his mother that he had sought the poet in his retreat, perhaps glimpsed the wife about whom an atmosphere of mystery seemed to have gathered.
"I think I hear him coming."
"Hullo, what's that?"
"An English pheasant. Renny is stocking the woods with them."
She whirred heavily out of sight, young ones fluttering after her. A rabbit hopped down the path, but, seeing the two on the bridge, turned, showed a snowy stern in three successive leaps, and disappeared into a thicket.
Eden's legs appeared, descending the path; then his body became visible, and last his head, touched by the flicker of sunlight between leaves. He was carrying some rolled-up papers. "A poet, and beautiful!" thought Leigh. "How I wish the girls were here!"
