Not until he had eaten his fill did Martin begin to look closely at the flowers on the plant.  It was the passion-flower, and he had never seen it before, and now that he looked well at it he thought it the loveliest and strangest flower he had ever beheld; not brilliant and shining, jewel-like, in the sun, like the scarlet verbena of the plains, or some yellow flower, but pale and misty, the petals being of a dim greenish cream-colour, with a large blue circle in the centre; and the blue, too, was misty like the blue haze in the distance on a summer day.  To see and admire it better he reached out his hand and tried to pluck one of the flowers; then in an instant he dropped his hand, as if he had been pricked by a thorn.  But there was no thorn and nothing to hurt him; he dropped his hand only because he felt that he had hurt the flower.  Moving a step back he stared at it, and the flower seemed like a thing alive that looked back at him, and asked him why he had hurt it.

“O, poor flower!” said Martin, and, coming closer he touched it gently with his finger-tips; and then, standing on tiptoe, he touched its petals with his lips, just as his mother had often and often kissed his little hand when he had bruised it or pricked it with a thorn.

Then, while still standing by the plant, on bringing his eyes down to the ground he spied a great snake lying coiled up on a bed of moss on the sunny side of the same tree where the plant was growing.  He remembered the dear little snake he had once made a friend of, and he did not feel afraid, for he thought that all snakes must be friendly towards him, although this was a very big one, thicker than his arm and of a different colour.  It was a pale olive-green, like the half-dry moss it was lying on, with a pattern of black and brown mottling along its back.  It was lying coiled round and round, with its flat arrow-shaped head resting on its coils, and its round bright eyes fixed on Martin’s face.  The sun shining on its eyes made them glint like polished jewels or pieces of glass, and when Martin moved nearer and stood still, or when he drew back and went to this side or that, those brilliant glinting eyes were still on his face, and it began to trouble him, until at last he covered his face with his hands.  Then he opened his fingers enough to peep through them, and still those glittering eyes were fixed on him.

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Martin wondered if the snake was vexed with him for coming there, and why it watched him so steadily with those shining eyes.  “Will you please look some other way?” he said at last, but the snake would not, and so he turned from it, and then it seemed to him that everything was alive and watching him in the same intent way—­the passion-flowers, the green leaves, the grass, the trees, the wide sky, the great shining sun.  He listened, and there was no sound in the wood, not even the hum of a fly or wild bee, and it was so still that not a leaf moved.