‘Yes,’ I said, ’the purest, and sweetest, and best water in the world when drunk from such a cup.’

She drew her hand away and let the water drop through her fingers, and turned round to look at the scene we had left, where the summit of Snowdon was towering beyond a reach of rock, bathed in the rapidly deepening light.

‘No idle compliments between you and me, sir,’ she said, with a smile.  ’Remember that I have still time and strength to go back to the top and follow Sinfi down to the camp.’

And then we both laughed together, as we laughed that afternoon in Wilderness Road when she enunciated her theories upon the voices of men and the voices of birds.  She then stood gazing abstractedly into a pool of water, upon which the evening lights were now falling.  As I saw her reflected in the surface of the stream, which was as smooth as a mirror—­saw her reflected there sometimes on an almost colourless surface, sometimes amid a procession in which every colour of the rainbow took part, I sighed.  ‘Why do you sigh?’ said she.

I could not tell her why, for I was recalling Wilderspin’s words about her matchless beauty and its inspiring effect upon the painter who painted it.  It would indeed, as Wilderspin had said, endow mediocrity with genius.

‘Why do you sigh?’ she repeated.

’Oh, if I could paint that, Winnie, if I could paint that picture in the water.’

‘And why should you not?’ she said, in a dreamy way.  And then a sudden thought seemed to strike her, and she said with much energy, ’Become a painter, Henry!  Become a painter!  No man ever yet satisfied a true woman who did not work—­work hard at something—­anything—­if not in the active affairs of life, in the world of art.  My love you must always have now—­you must always have it under any circumstances.  I could not help under any circumstances giving you love.  But I fear I could not give a rich, idle man—­even if he were Henry himself—­enough love to satisfy a yearning like yours.’

She bent her face again over the water, and looked at the picture.

’You have often told me that my face is beautiful, Henry, and you know you never could make me believe it.  But suppose you should be right after all, and suppose that you were a painter, and used it for a picture of the Spirit of Snowdon, I should then thank God for having given me a beautiful face, for it would enable you to win your goal.  And afterwards, when its beauty had passed away, as it soon would, I should have no further need for beauty, for my painter-husband would, partly through me, have won.’

As we walked along, she pointed to the tubular bridge over the Menai Straits and to the coast of Anglesey.  The panorama had that fairy-like expression which belongs so peculiarly to Welsh scenery.  Other mountainous countries in Europe are beautiful, and since that divine walk I have become intimately acquainted with them, but for associations romantic and poetic, there is surely no land in the world equal to North Wales.