“I suppose so,” said Ishmael listlessly.  Boase looked at him keenly.  He could hardly believe that Cloom meant nothing to Ishmael; he was certain that there balm must eventually be found.  He glanced out of the window, and saw that the rain had left off and a still pallor held the air.

“Come out for a turn with me,” he suggested.  “I haven’t seen you go beyond the fields for ages.  Your mother’ll be all right now.”

Ishmael hesitated, then picked up a stick, and went out with the Parson.  Boase had wondered much how deeply Ishmael had been hurt by the defection of Blanche, and it had been difficult for him to ascertain, as the young man’s reserve was not of the quality which all the time tacitly asks for questioning.  On the surface he had shown no trace, except by a sudden ageing that was probably temporary; there had been, as far as Boase knew, no outbreaks of rage or pain.  Now he began to suspect that it was taking a worse way—­an utter benumbing of the faculty of enjoyment.  Never since Ishmael’s earliest boyhood had beauty failed to rouse him to emotion, and the Parson wondered whether it could fail now.  At least it was worth trying, and it was not without guile that he had proposed this walk; he knew of something he meant to spring upon Ishmael as a test.  He led, as though casually, to a wild gorge that lay on the way to the Vicarage, but nearer the sea than the commonly-used path, which here looped inland to avoid it.  A stream, half-hidden by heavy growths of bracken and hemlock and furze, raced down this gorge to the pebbly beach, where it divided up into a dozen tiny streams that bubbled and trickled to the sea’s edge.  All down the gorge great hummocks of earth had been thrown up at some giant upheaval of the land’s making, and over their turfy, furze-ridden slopes granite boulders were tumbled one against the other.  In the treacherous fissures between brambles and bracken had grown thickly; over everything else except the bare rocks the furze had spread in a dense sea that followed the curves of the slopes and stretched on up over each side of the gorge.  Everything was grey—­pearly grey of the sky, grey-green of the turf, brown-grey of last year’s undergrowth, cold grey of the boulders—­everything except the gorse; and it was this that had caused the Parson to catch his breath and stand amazed when first he came upon it as at too much of beauty for eyes to believe—­that caught at him again now though he was expecting it.  He and Ishmael rounded the end of the valley, mounted a slope, and stood with all the length and sweep of the gorge rolling around them.