Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " It must be nearly one o'clock. It is time for you to come to talk to father about the Greek hymn." I" Let's look at this picture first—' The Fete beneath the Colonnade'—it is one of the most beautiful things in the world." Sipping her coffee, her feet on the fender, she abandoned herself to memories of the afternoon. She had been to the Carmelite Church in Kensington, to hear the music of a new and very realistic Belgian composer; and, walking down the High Street after Mass, she and Owen had argued his artistic intentions. At the end of the High Street, he had proposed that they should walk in the Gardens. The broad walk was full of the colour of spring and its perfume, the thick grass was like a carpet beneath their feet; they had lingered by a pond, and she had watched the little yachts, carrying each a portent of her own success or failure. The Albert Hall curved over the tops of the trees, and sheep strayed through the deep May grass in Arcadian peacefulness; but the most vivid impression was when they had come upon a lawn stretching gently to the water's edge. Owen had feared the day was too cold for sitting out, but at that moment the sun contradicted him with a broad, warm gleam. He had fetched two chairs from a pile stacked under a tree, and sitting on that lawn, swept by the shadow of softly moving trees, they had talked an hour or more. The scene came back to her as she sat looking into the fire. She saw the spring, easily victorious amid the low bushes, capturing the rough / branches of the elms one by one, and the distant slopes of ' the park, grey like a piece of faded tapestry. And as in a tapestry, the ducks came through the mist in long, pulsing flight, and when the day cleared the pea fowl were seen across the water, sunning themselves on the high branche... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.