in her escape from dullness. Not a step, not a twig, was
unimportant to her.

"What is that?"

There was a voice in the wood, in the distance behind them. The
voice of Mr. Eager? He shrugged his shoulders. An Italian's
ignorance is sometimes more remarkable than his knowledge. She
could not make him understand that perhaps they had missed the
clergymen. The view was forming at last; she could discern the
river, the golden plain, other hills.

"Eccolo!" he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell
out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen
on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets
from end to end.

"Courage!" cried her companion, now standing some six feet above.
"Courage and love."

She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into
view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts,
irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems
collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with
spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion;
this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty
gushed out to water the earth.