“No, Dick wouldn’t mind. But you are mad, you know, quite mad!”
For all that his eyes were very kindly as he looked down at her.
“I expect it is being so much alone,” she said tranquilly, stooping to smell the pinks.
“Was Goltz an orthodox Jew then?” asked North.
“Oh no, very far from it. He wasn’t anything in the least orthodox. If you could have known him!” Ruth laughed a little. “But he had some queer religion of his own. He believed in Beauty, and that it was a revelation of something very great and wonderful, beyond the wildest dreams of a crassly ignorant and blind humanity. That glass vase was his. Have you noticed the wonderful shape of it? And look now with the light shining through. Do you think it is a shame to put flowers in it? But their scent is the incense on the altar.”
“Oh, that’s the idea, is it?” said North. He spoke very gently, as one would to a child showing you its treasures.
“This place is full of altars,” said Ruth, her eyes looking west. “Do you know the drive in the little spinney? All one broad blue path of hyacinths, and white may trees on either side.”
“Oh, that’s the idea, is it?” said North. He in his voice—“you mean Dick’s ‘Pathway to Heaven’!”
“Did he call it that?”
“He said it was so blue it must be.”