“Can’t you find it?”

“Rather.  I say, do come and look.  There’s such a pretty sight.”

She rose and went with him.  Up a turning in the dell, about fifty yards from their tree, a long grassy way cut sheer through a sheet of wild hyacinths.  It ran as if between two twin borders of blue mist, that hemmed it in and closed it by the illusion of their approach.  On either side the blue mist spread, and drifted away through the inlets of the wood, and became a rarer and rarer atmosphere, torn by the tree-trunks and the fern.  The path led to a small circular clearing, a shaft that sucked the daylight down.  It was as if the sunshine were being poured in one stream from a flooded sky, and danced in the dark cup earth held for it.  The trees grew close and tall round the clearing.  Light dripped from their leaves and streamed down their stems, turning their grey to silver.  The bottom of the cup was a level floor of grass that had soaked in light till it shone like emerald.  A stone cottage faced the path; so small that a laburnum brushed its roof and a may-tree laid a crimson face against the grey gable of its side.  The patch of garden in front was stuffed with wall-flowers and violets.  The sun lay warm on them; their breath stirred in the cup, like the rich, sweet fragrance of the wine of day.

Majendie grasped Anne’s arm and led her forward.

In the middle of the green circle, under the streaming sun, cradled in warm grass, a girl baby sat laughing and fondling her naked feet.  She laughed as she lay on her back and opened one folded, wrinkled foot to the sun; she laughed as she threw herself forward and beat her knees with the outspread palms of her hands; she laughed as she rocked her soft body to and fro from her rosy hips; then she stopped laughing suddenly, and began crooning to herself a delicious, unintelligible song.

“Look,” said Majendie, “that’s what I wanted to show you.”

“Oh—­oh—­oh—­” said Anne, and looked, and stood stock-still.

The beatitude of that adorable little figure possessed the scene.  Green earth and blue sky were so much shelter and illumination to its pure and solitary joy.

“Did you ever see anything so heart-rending?” said Majendie.  “That anything could be so young!”

Anne shook her head, dumb with the fascination.

As they approached again, the little creature rolled on its waist, and crawled over the grass to her feet.

“The little lamb—­” said she, and stooped, and lifted it.

It turned to her, cuddling.  Through the thin muslin of her bodice she could feel the pressure of its tender palms.

Majendie stood close to her and tried gently to detach and possess himself of the delicate clinging fingers.  But his eyes were upon Anne’s eyes.  They drew her; she looked up, her eyes flashed to the meeting-point; his widened in one long penetrating gaze.

A sudden pricking pain went through her, there where the pink and flaxen thing lay sun-warm and life-warm to her breast.