They were on the hill now and as he lay at her feet he did not need to look at her, but could look down across the valley. She might be looking at him and having thoughts just as he was, but that was her own affair. One did well enough to have one's own thoughts, straighten out one's own matters. The rain that had freshened everything had stirred up many new smells in the wood. How fortunate there was no wind. The smells were not blown away, but were lying low, like a soft blanket over everything. The ground had a fragrance of its own and with it was blended the fragrance of decaying leaves and of animals too. There was a path along the top of the hill along which sheep sometimes went. Little piles of sheep-droppings were lying in the hard path back of the tree where she sat. He did not turn to look, but knew they were there. The sheep-droppings were like marbles. It was good to feel that within the compass of his love of smells he could include all life, even the excretions of life. Somewhere in the wood there was a kind of flowering tree. It couldn't be far away. The fragrance from it mingled with all the other smells floating over the hillside. The tree was calling to the bees and insects who were answering with mad eagerness. They flew swiftly along, in the air over John Webster's head, over her head too. One put off other things to play with thoughts.

One pitched little thoughts into the air idly, like boys at play, pitched and then caught them again. After a while, when the pro] time came, there would be a crisis come into the lives of John Webster and the woman he had married, but now one played wit thoughts. One pitched them into the air and caught them again.

People went about knowing the fragrance of flowers and a few other things, spices and the like, they had been told by the poet were fragrant. Could walls be erected about smells too? Was there not a Frenchman once who wrote a poem regarding the fragrance of the arm-pits of women? Was that something he had heard talked about among the young men at school or was it just a fool idea that had come into his own head?

The thing was to get the sense of the fragrance of all things, of earth plants peoples animals birds insects, all together in the mind. One could weave a golden mantle to spread over the earth and over people. The strong animal smells, taken with the smell of pine trees and all such heavy odours, would give the mantle strength to wear well. Then upon the basis of that strength one could turn his fancy loose. Now was the time for all the minor poets to come running. On the solid basis John Webster's fancy had built, they could weave all manner of designs, using all the smells their less sturdy nostrils dare receive, the smell of violets beside woodland paths, of little fragile mushrooms, of honey dripping from the sacks under the bellies of insects, of the hair of maidens fresh come from the bath.