water between the inequalities of the floor. The place looked as
big as Switzerland or Norway--as indeed for the moment it was--
and he came upon it at a time when his life too was beginning to
expand. Accordingly the dell became for him a kind of church--a
church where indeed you could do anything you liked, but where
anything you did would be transfigured. Like the ancient Greeks,
he could even laugh at his holy place and leave it no less holy.
He chatted gaily about it, and about the pleasant thoughts with
which it inspired him; he took his friends there; he even took
people whom he did not like. "Procul este, profani!" exclaimed
a delighted aesthete on being introduced to it. But this was
never to be the attitude of Rickie. He did not love the vulgar
herd, but he knew that his own vulgarity would be greater if he
forbade it ingress, and that it was not by preciosity that he
would attain to the intimate spirit of the dell. Indeed, if he
had agreed with the aesthete, he would possibly not have
introduced him. If the dell was to bear any inscription, he would
have liked it to be "This way to Heaven," painted on a sign-post
by the high-road, and he did not realize till later years that
the number of visitors would not thereby have sensibly increased.

On the blessed Monday that the Pembrokes left, he walked out here
with three friends. It was a day when the sky seemed enormous.
One cloud, as large as a continent, was voyaging near the sun,
whilst other clouds seemed anchored to the horizon, too lazy or
too happy to move. The sky itself was of the palest blue, paling
to white where it approached the earth; and the earth, brown,
wet, and odorous, was engaged beneath it on its yearly duty of
decay. Rickie was open to the complexities of autumn; he felt
extremely tiny--extremely tiny and extremely important; and