By some freak of soil or aspect every tuft of the low-lying cushion gorse that covered the slopes and hummocks as far as the eye could see was in full bloom, not a dry bush to be seen—­bloom so thickly set that hardly a green prickle was visible; bloom of one pure vivid yellow, undimmed in the distance, unmarked to closest view, a yellow that was pure essence of that colour untinged by any breath of aught else.  The air reeked with the rich scent; the greyness of sky and land became one neutral tone for the onslaught of those pools of flaring molten gold that burnt to heaven with their undestructive flame.  And every ardent sheet of it had a grape-like bloom, made by the velvety quality of the thousands of close-set petals; they gave the sensation of exquisite touch merely by looking at them, while their passionate colour and scent made the senses drunken on pure loveliness.

That was how it had taken Boase—­how in normal days it would have taken Ishmael, even more keenly.  Now he stood staring at it, hardly seeing, untouched to anything but a bleak knowledge that it was beautiful.  Not a breath of ecstasy went through him; for him it was nothing, and he never even noticed that Boase was watching him.  He moved forward as though to continue the walk, and the Parson fell into stride beside him.  Something in Ishmael was dead, and in dying it had for the time being stunned what Boase could only hope was a more vital and permanent part.

Ishmael said good-bye at the Vicarage and went home again, his mind floating through greyness even as his body was passing through the grey of the weather and surroundings.  At home he found John-James waiting to consult him about the breaking up of a grass-field, and harnessing the horse to the iron-toothed tormentor, he took it out himself and spent the rest of the day driving it over the tumbling clods.

CHAPTER XVII

THE CLIFF AND THE VALLEY

A month later Annie’s religiosity, which had been increasing in violence, unmistakably took the form of mania.  She became very violent, and for her own sake as much as for her family’s she was removed to a doctor’s establishment for such cases in Devonshire.  The whole affair left the three at home very untouched—­John-James because he was of a stolid habit, Vassie because she was never in sympathy with her mother and had borne much from her of late, and Ishmael because it seemed to him to have really no more to do with him intimately than if she had been a stranger woman living in his house.  Both he and Vassie felt guiltily on the subject, not realising that reaction from strain was at the bottom of their seeming impassivity.  To be able to take definite action instead of having merely to put up with the thing day by day was, when it came, a blessing to both of them, although it took what might conventionally have been assumed to be such a terrible shape.  They were both very honest