Hour after hour in the gardens and orchards they worked in the full beams
of the sun, gathering fruit for the London market, resting at midday in
the shade of the elms in the corner. Even then they were in the
sunshine--even in the shade, for the air carries it, or its influence, as
it carries the perfumes of flowers. The heated air undulates over the
field in waves which are visible at a distance; near at hand they are not
seen, but roll in endless ripples through the shadows of the trees,
bringing with them the actinic power of the sun. Not actinic--alchemic--
some intangible mysterious power which cannot be supplied in any other
form but the sun's rays. It reddens the cherry, it gilds the apple, it
colours the rose, it ripens the wheat, it touches a woman's face with
the golden-brown of ripe life--ripe as a plum. There is no other hue so
beautiful as this human sunshine tint.

The great painters knew it--Rubens, for instance; perhaps he saw it on
the faces of the women who gathered fruit or laboured at the harvest in
the Low Countries centuries since. He could never have seen it in a city
of these northern climes, that is certain. Nothing in nature that I know,
except the human face, ever attains this colour. Nothing like it is ever
seen in the sky, either at dawn or sunset; the dawn is often golden,
often scarlet, or purple and gold; the sunset crimson, flaming bright, or
delicately grey and scarlet; lovely colours all of them, but not like
this. Nor is there any flower comparable to it, nor any gem. It is purely
human, and it is only found on the human face which has felt the sunshine
continually. There must, too, I suppose, be a disposition towards it, a
peculiar and exceptional condition of the fibres which build up the skin;
for of the numbers who work out of doors, very, very few possess it; they
become brown, red, or tanned, sometimes of a parchment hue--they do not
get this colour.