“Obviously, it is the nature of the organism”, interposed the medical guest, Dr. Burton Brown; “it is necessary in the very type of vegetable structure.”

“In other words, a tree sticks in the mud from year’s end to year’s end,” answered Treherne.  “So do you stop in your consulting room from ten to eleven every day.  And don’t you fancy a fairy, looking in at your window for a flash after having just jumped over the moon and played mulberry bush with the Pleiades, would think you were a vegetable structure, and that sitting still was the nature of the organism?”

“I don’t happen to believe in fairies,” said the doctor rather stiffly, for the argumentum ad hominem was becoming too common.  A sulphurous subconscious anger seemed to radiate from the dark poet.

“Well, I should hope not, Doctor,” began the Squire, in his loud and friendly style, and then stopped, seeing the other’s attention arrested.  The silent butler waiting on the guests had appeared behind the doctor’s chair, and was saying something in the low, level tones of the welltrained servant.  He was so smooth a specimen of the type that others never noticed, at first, that he also repeated the dark portrait, however varnished, so common in this particular family of Cornish Celts.  His face was sallow and even yellow, and his hair indigo black.  He went by the name of Miles.  Some felt oppressed by the tribal type in this tiny corner of England.  They felt somehow as if all these dark faces were the masks of a secret society.

The doctor rose with a half apology.  “I must ask pardon for disturbing this pleasant party; I am called away on duty.  Please don’t let anybody move.  We have to be ready for these things, you know.  Perhaps Mr. Treherne will admit that my habits are not so very vegetable, after all.”  With this Parthian shaft, at which there was some laughter, he strode away very rapidly across the sunny lawn to where the road dipped down toward the village.

“He is very good among the poor,” said the girl with an honorable seriousness.

“A capital fellow,” agreed the Squire.  “Where is Miles?  You will have a cigar, Mr. Treherne?” And he got up from the table; the rest followed, and the group broke up on the lawn.

“Remarkable man, Treherne,” said the American to the lawyer conversationally.

“Remarkable is the word,” assented Ashe rather grimly.  “But I don’t think I’ll make any remark about him.”

The Squire, too impatient to wait for the yellow-faced Miles, had betaken himself indoors for the cigars, and Barbara found herself once more paired off with the poet, as she floated along the terrace garden; but this time, symbolically enough, upon the same level of lawn.  Mr. Treherne looked less eccentric after having shed his curious cloak, and seemed a quieter and more casual figure.

“I didn’t mean to be rude to you just now,” she said abruptly.