snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swifts' wings whirred like musket-balls, as they rushed screaming past his head; and ever the river fleeted by, bearing his eyes away down the current, till its wild eddies began to glow with crimson beneath the setting sun. The complex harmony of sights and sounds slid softly over his soul, and he sank away into a still day-dream, too passive for imagination, too deep for meditation, and
Did pass into his face.
Blame him not. There are more things in a man's heart than ever get in through his thoughts.
On a sudden, a soft voice behind him startled him.
'Can a poor Cockney artist venture himself along this timber without falling in?'
Lancelot turned.
'Come out to me, and if you stumble, the naiads will rise out of their depths, and 'hold up their pearled wrists' to save their favourite.'
The artist walked timidly out along the beams, and sat down beside Lancelot, who shook him warmly by the hand.
'Welcome, Claude Mellot, and all lovely enthusiasms and symbolisms! Expound to me, now, the meaning of that water-lily leaf and its grand simple curve, as it lies sleeping there in the back eddy.'
'Oh, I am too amused to philosophise. The fair Argemone has been just treating me to her three hundred and sixty-fifth philippic against my unoffending beard.'
