had been walking amongst the vines and plucking the ripe grapes, and the
juice had trickled down over his breast. Standing beside the girl,
unashamed in the sunlight, he began to sing one of Sappho's love songs.
His voice was as full and rich as a woman's, but purged of all emotion;
he was an instrument of music in the flesh. Lucian looked at him
steadily; the white perfect body shone against the roses and the blue of
the sky, clear and gleaming as marble in the glare of the sun. The
words he sang burned and flamed with passion, and he was as unconscious
of their meaning as the twin pipes of the flute. And the girl was
smiling. The vicar shook hands and went on, well pleased with his remarks
on the temple of Diana, and also with Lucian's polite interest.

"He is by no means wanting in intelligence," he said to his family. "A
little curious in manner, perhaps, but not stupid."

"Oh, papa," said Henrietta, "don't you think he is rather silly? He can't
talk about anything--anything interesting, I mean. And he pretends to
know a lot about books, but I heard him say the other day he had never
read _The Prince of the House of David_ or _Ben-Hur_. Fancy!"

The vicar had not interrupted Lucian. The sun still beat upon the roses,
and a little breeze bore the scent of them to his nostrils together with
the smell of grapes and vine-leaves. He had become curious in sensation,
and as he leant back upon the cushions covered with glistening yellow
silk, he was trying to analyze a strange ingredient in the perfume of the
air. He had penetrated far beyond the crude distinctions of modern times,
beyond the rough: "there's a smell of roses," "there must be sweetbriar
somewhere." Modern perceptions of odor were, he knew, far below those of
the savage in delicacy. The degraded black fellow of Australia could
distinguish odors in a way that made the consumer of "damper" stare in