“But we found San Salvatore,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, “and it is rather silly that Mrs. Fisher should behave as if it belonged only to her.”

“What is rather silly,” said Mrs. Wilkins with much serenity, “is to mind.  I can’t see the least point in being in authority at the price of one’s liberty.”

Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing to that for two reasons—­first, because she was struck by the remarkable and growing calm of the hitherto incoherent and excited Lotty, and secondly because what she was looking at was so very beautiful.

All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face.  It was wistaria.  Wistaria and sunshine . . . she remembered the advertisement.  Here indeed were both in profusion.  The wistaria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour.  The ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea, each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees.  The cherry-trees and peach-trees were in blossom—­lovely showers of white and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives; the fig-leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine-buds were only beginning to show.  And beneath these trees were groups of blue and purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses, and the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at the bottom was the sea.  Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere; every sort of colour, piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers—­the periwinkles looked exactly as if they were being poured down each side of the steps—­and flowers that grow only in borders in England, proud flowers keeping themselves to themselves over there, such as the great blue irises and the lavender, were being jostled by small, shining common things like dandelions and daisies and the white bells of the wild onion, and only seemed the better and the more exuberant for it.

They stood looking at this crowd of loveliness, this happy jumble, in silence.  No, it didn’t matter what Mrs. Fisher did; not here; not in such beauty.  Mrs. Arbuthnot’s discomposure melted out of her.  In the warmth and light of what she was looking at, of what to her was a manifestation, and entirely new side of God, how could one be discomposed?  If only Frederick were with her, seeing it too, seeing as he would have seen it when first they were lovers, in the days when he saw what she saw and loved what she loved. . .

She sighed.

“You mustn’t sigh in heaven,” said Mrs. Wilkins.  “One doesn’t.”