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There was meaning in the stoop of the old woman over her work, and in the quick motions of the little pig, and in her diminishing globe of wool. A young man came singing over the streams on a mule, and there was beauty in his pose and sincerity in his greeting. The sun made no accidental patterns upon the spreading roots of the trees, and there was intention in the nodding clumps of asphodel, and in the music of the water. To Mr. Lucas, who, in a brief space of time, had discovered not only Greece, but England and all the world and life, there seemed nothing ludicrous in the desire to hang within the tree another votive offering—a little model of an entire man.

“Why, here’s papa, playing at being Merlin.”

All unnoticed they had arrived—Ethel, Mrs. Forman, Mr. Graham, and the English-speaking dragoman. Mr. Lucas peered out at them suspiciously. They had suddenly become unfamiliar, and all that they did seemed strained and coarse.

“Allow me to give you a hand,” said Mr
. Graham, a young man who was always polite to his elders.

Mr. Lucas felt annoyed.”Thank you, I can manage perfectly well by myself, he replied. His foot slipped as he stepped out of the tree, and went into the spring.

“Oh papa, my papa!” said Ethel, “what are you doing? Thank goodness I have got a change for you on the mule.”

She tended him carefully, giving him clean socks and dry boots, and then sat him down on the rug beside the lunch basket, while she went with the others to explore the grove.

They came back in ecstasies, in which Mr. Lucas tried to join. But he found them intolerable. Their enthusiasm was superficial, commonplace, and spasmodic. They had no perception of the coherent beauty that was flowering around them. He tried at least to explain his feelings, and what he said was:

“I am altogether pleased with the appearance of this place. It impresses me very favourably. The trees are fine, remarkably fine for Greece, and there is something very poetic in the spring of clear running water. The people too seem kindly and civil. It is decidedly an attractive place.”

Mrs. Forman upbraided him for his tepid praise.

“Oh, it is a place in a thousand!” she cried, “I could live and die here! I really would stop if I had not to be back at Athens! It reminds me of the Colonus of Sophocles.”

“Well, Imust stop,” said Ethel.”I positively must.”

“Yes, do! You and your father! Antigone and Oedipus. Of course you must stop at Colonus!”

Mr. Lucas was almost breathless with excitement. When he stood within the tree, he had believed that his happiness would be independent of locality. But these few minutes’ conversation had undeceived him. He no longer trusted himself to journey through the world, for old thoughts, old wearinesses might be waiting to rejoin him as soon as he left the shade of the planes, and the music of the virgin water. To sleep in the Khan with the gracious, kind-eyedcountry people, to watch the bats flit about within the globe of shade, and see the moon turn the golden patterns into silver—one such night would place him beyond relapse, and confirm him forever, in the kingdom he had regained. But all his lips could say was: “I should be willing to put in a night here.”

“You mean a week, papa! It would be sacrilege to put in less.”

“A week then, a week,” said his lips, irritated at being corrected, while his heart was leaping with joy. All through lunch he spoke to them no more, but watched the place he should know so well, and the people who would so soon be his companions and friends. The inmates of the Khan only consisted of an old woman, a middle-aged woman, a young man and two children, and to none of them had he spoken, yet he loved them as he loved everything that moved or breathed or existed beneath the benedictory shade of the planes.