“I do see it,” Lady Saxthorpe murmured.  “What eyes you have, Mr. Fentolin!  What perception for colour!”

“Dear lady,” Mr. Fentolin said, “I am one of those who benefit by the law of compensations.  On a morning like this I can spend hours merely feasting my eyes upon this prospect, and I can find, if not happiness, the next best thing.  The world is full of beautiful places, but the strange part of it is that beauty has countless phases, and each phase differs in some subtle and unexplainable manner from all others.  Look with me fixedly, dear Lady Saxthorpe.  Look, indeed, with more than your eyes.  Look at that flush of wild lavender, where it fades into the sands on one side, and strikes the emerald green of that wet seamoss on the other.  Look at the liquid blue of that tongue of sea which creeps along its bed through the yellow sands, through the dark meadowland, which creeps and oozes and widens till in an hour’s time it will have become a river.  Look at my sand islands, virgin from the foot of man, the home of sea-gulls, the islands of a day.  There may be other and more beautiful places.  There is none quite like this.”

“I pity you no longer,” Lady Saxthorpe asserted fervently.  “The eyes of the artist are a finer possession than the limbs of the athlete.”

The butler announced luncheon, and they all trooped in.  Hamel found himself next to Lady Saxthorpe.

“Dear Mr. Fentolin has been so kind,” she confided to him as they took their places.  “I came in fear and trembling to ask for a very small cheque for my dear brother’s diocese.  My brother is a colonial bishop, you know.  Can you imagine what Mr. Fentolin has given me?”

Hamel wondered politely.  Lady Saxthorpe continued with an air of triumph.

“A thousand pounds!  Just fancy that—­a thousand pounds!  And some people say he is so difficult,” she went on, dropping her voice.  “Mrs. Hungerford came all the way over from Norwich to beg for the infirmary there, and he gave her nothing.”

“What was his excuse?” Hamel asked.

“I think he told her that it was against his principles to give to hospitals,” Lady Saxthorpe replied.  “He thinks that they should be supported out of the rates.”

“Some people have queer ideas of charity,” Hamel remarked.  “Now I am afraid that if I had been Mr. Fentolin, I would have given the thousand pounds willingly to a hospital, but not a penny to a mission.”

Mr. Fentolin looked suddenly down the table.  He was some distance away, but his hearing was wonderful.

“Ah, my dear Hamel,” he said, “believe me, missions are very wonderful things.  It is only from a very careful study of their results that I have brought myself to be a considerable supporter of those where I have some personal knowledge of the organisation.  Hospitals, on the other hand, provide for the poor what they ought to be able to provide for themselves.  The one thing to avoid in the giving away of money is pauperisation.  What do you think, Florence?”