“Gibbon the historian?” enquired Mrs. Flushing.  “I connect him with some of the happiest hours of my life.  We used to lie in bed and read Gibbon—­about the massacres of the Christians, I remember—­when we were supposed to be asleep.  It’s no joke, I can tell you, readin’ a great big book, in double columns, by a night-light, and the light that comes through a chink in the door.  Then there were the moths—­tiger moths, yellow moths, and horrid cockchafers.  Louisa, my sister, would have the window open.  I wanted it shut.  We fought every night of our lives over that window.  Have you ever seen a moth dyin’ in a night-light?” she enquired.

Again there was an interruption.  Hewet and Hirst appeared at the drawing-room window and came up to the tea-table.

Rachel’s heart beat hard.  She was conscious of an extraordinary intensity in everything, as though their presence stripped some cover off the surface of things; but the greetings were remarkably commonplace.

“Excuse me,” said Hirst, rising from his chair directly he had sat down.  He went into the drawing-room, and returned with a cushion which he placed carefully upon his seat.

“Rheumatism,” he remarked, as he sat down for the second time.

“The result of the dance?” Helen enquired.

“Whenever I get at all run down I tend to be rheumatic,” Hirst stated.  He bent his wrist back sharply.  “I hear little pieces of chalk grinding together!”

Rachel looked at him.  She was amused, and yet she was respectful; if such a thing could be, the upper part of her face seemed to laugh, and the lower part to check its laughter.

Hewet picked up the book that lay on the ground.

“You like this?” he asked in an undertone.

“No, I don’t like it,” she replied.  She had indeed been trying all the afternoon to read it, and for some reason the glory which she had perceived at first had faded, and, read as she would, she could not grasp the meaning with her mind.

“It goes round, round, round, like a roll of oil-cloth,” she hazarded.  Evidently she meant Hewet alone to hear her words, but Hirst demanded, “What d’you mean?”

She was instantly ashamed of her figure of speech, for she could not explain it in words of sober criticism.

“Surely it’s the most perfect style, so far as style goes, that’s ever been invented,” he continued.  “Every sentence is practically perfect, and the wit—­”

“Ugly in body, repulsive in mind,” she thought, instead of thinking about Gibbon’s style.  “Yes, but strong, searching, unyielding in mind.”  She looked at his big head, a disproportionate part of which was occupied by the forehead, and at the direct, severe eyes.

“I give you up in despair,” he said.  He meant it lightly, but she took it seriously, and believed that her value as a human being was lessened because she did not happen to admire the style of Gibbon.  The others were talking now in a group about the native villages which Mrs. Flushing ought to visit.