“You know where I mean, don’t you?” I asked, “because you saw me there?” He just said yes, and then we started.
It was hot, and air was scarce. I remember that we went uphill, and that I realised there was considerable difference in our ages. We crossed some fields first—smothered in flowers so thick that I wondered how much grass the cows got out of it!—and then came to a sprinkling of fine young larches that looked as soft as velvet. There was no path, just a wild mountain side. I had very little breath on the steep zigzags, but Arthur talked easily—and talked mighty well, too: the light and shade, the colouring, and the effect of all this wilderness of lonely beauty on the mind. He kept all this suppressed at home in business. It was safety valves. I twigged that. It was the artist in him talking. He seemed to think there was nothing in the world but Beauty—with a big B all the time. And the odd thing was he took for granted that I felt the same. It was cute of him to flatter me that way. “Daulis and the lone Cephissian vale,” I heard; and a few moments later—with a sort of reverence in his voice like worship—he called out a great singing name: “Astarte!”
“Day is her face, and midnight is her hair,
And morning hours are but the golden stair
By which she climbs to Night.”
It was here first that a queer change began to grow upon me too.
“Steady on, boy! I’ve forgotten all my classics ages ago,” I cried.
He turned and gazed down on me, his big eyes glowing, and not a sign of perspiration on his skin.
“That’s nothing,” he exclaimed in his musical, deep voice. “You know it, or you’d never have felt things in this wood last night; and you wouldn’t have wanted to come out with me now!”
“How?” I gasped. “How’s that?”
“You’ve come,” he continued quietly, “to the only valley in this artificial country that has atmosphere. This valley is alive—especially this end of it. There’s superstition here, thank God! Even the peasants know things.”