drinking tea, surrounded by a numerous family. It was in that
tone that he must have spoken to his children when they were
tiresome. "All in good time, sir." Denis's man of action
collapsed, punctured.

He left his luggage to be called for later, and pushed off on his
bicycle. He always took his bicycle when he went into the
country. It was part of the theory of exercise. One day one
would get up at six o'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, or
Stratford-on-Avon--anywhere. And within a radius of twenty miles
there were always Norman churches and Tudor mansions to be seen
in the course of an afternoon's excursion. Somehow they never
did get seen, but all the same it was nice to feel that the
bicycle was there, and that one fine morning one really might get
up at six.

Once at the top of the long hill which led up from Camlet
station, he felt his spirits mounting. The world, he found, was
good. The far-away blue hills, the harvests whitening on the
slopes of the ridge along which his road led him, the treeless
sky-lines that changed as he moved--yes, they were all good. He
was overcome by the beauty of those deeply embayed combes,
scooped in the flanks of the ridge beneath him. Curves, curves:
he repeated the word slowly, trying as he did so to find some
term in which to give expression to his appreciation. Curves--
no, that was inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, as
though to scoop the achieved expression out of the air, and
almost fell off his bicycle. What was the word to describe the
curves of those little valleys? They were as fine as the lines
of a human body, they were informed with the subtlety of art...