far-off headlands like a lasso.

And yet, however high they went, the desert still blossomed
like the rose. The fields were burnished in sun and wind
with the colour of kingfisher and parrot and humming-bird,
the hues of a hundred flowering flowers. There are no lovelier meadows
and woodlands than the English, no nobler crests or chasms than
those of Snowdon and Glencoe. But Ethel Harrogate had never before
seen the southern parks tilted on the splintered northern peaks;
the gorge of Glencoe laden with the fruits of Kent. There was nothing here
of that chill and desolation that in Britain one associates with
high and wild scenery. It was rather like a mosaic palace,
rent with earthquakes; or like a Dutch tulip garden blown to the stars
with dynamite.

"It's like Kew Gardens on Beachy Head," said Ethel.

"It is our secret," answered he, "the secret of the volcano;
that is also the secret of the revolution--that a thing can be violent
and yet fruitful."

"You are rather violent yourself," and she smiled at him.

"And yet rather fruitless," he admitted; "if I die tonight
I die unmarried and a fool."

"It is not my fault if you have come," she said after
a difficult silence.

"It is never your fault," answered Muscari; "it was not your fault