They did not rest again until the patch of hillside at which they worked was mown, when with a sigh of satisfaction they rested a moment on their scythes; but for a moment only, for presently Lydia ran for shelter from the sun to the shade of the tree under which I sat. She reclined quite close to me, looked me frankly in the face and smiled. I was surprised to find eyes that had escaped me till now suddenly become fixed composedly on mine, and noticed for the first time that these women put on and off their coquetry according to the context of their thought, for presently she said:

"I am afraid you are lazy!"

"I believe I am," answered I.

"You mean to say you wouldn't like to join us in our work?"

There was not the slightest reproach in her voice, only surprise.

"I much prefer looking at you," I replied with a little attempt at gallantry. But there was no response in her eyes that remained fixed on me. She was trying to explain me to herself. I felt uncomfortable at being a mere object of abstract curiosity. She was reclining on her side, resting on one hand: in the other hand she was absently twisting a flower she had plucked. Notwithstanding my discomfort I rejoiced in at last plunging my look deep into hers. What was happening in the blue depths of those eyes? I felt as though I were trying to penetrate the secrets of a house the windows of which reflected more light than they passed through. I saw the reflection only. Behind was a judge weighing me in the balance, but as to whose judgment I could form no idea. And although I was conscious that in her I had a critic, I was so bewitched by her charm that I said to her in an undertone—for the others were talking to one another:

"You are very beautiful!"

She waved her flower before my eyes as though to put a material obstacle, however frail, between us and smiled; but she looked down presently and laughingly answered:

"That doesn't make you any the less lazy."

I did not wish to be set down permanently in her mind as good for nothing, so I explained:

"I am not incurably so; indeed, at my own work I was industrious; but I never held a scythe in my life."

She looked at me again in open-eyed wonder.

"What was 'your own work'?" asked she.

"I practised law."

"What, nothing but law? Did you never get tired of doing nothing but law?"

"We believed in specializing."

"Ah, I remember! The nineteenth century was the great century of specialization. Later on it was found that specialization was necessary to original work, but that it brutalized labor; we have very few specialists now: only those who have genius for particular things, as, for example, doctors, engineers, electricians—but we have no lawyers." She laughed at me with bantering but good-natured contempt in her laugh as she emphasized the word "lawyers." "And you mean to say you did nothing but lawyerise?" And she suddenly with finger and thumb lifted my free hand that was resting on the grass—for I was reclining on my other elbow, too—and I became aware that my hand was soft and white.

"It wasn't always soft and white," I explained. "I did a great deal of rowing at college."

She kept hold of my hand with finger and thumb and laughed gently:

"I don't believe it ever did a useful bit of work in its life."

I was piqued; and yet her low laugh was so catching, her long eyes so subtle, her lips so bewitching, that I gladly let my hand hang in her contemptuous fingers so long as I could be near her and in commune with her.

"That depends on what you call useful work," said I.

"I call useful any work that contributes to our health, wealth, and well-being." The coquetry went out of her manner again and she became thoughtful. "The people of that time needed lawyers to fight their battles for them, but we have got rid of at any rate one principal occasion of discord—the occasion that made lawyers necessary. We have men specially versed in the law still, but they don't confine themselves to law; they cut hay too. Ariston is a great lawyer."

She had dropped my hand by this time; as she mentioned Ariston we both looked toward him; one of the girls exclaimed:

"I am hot; let's sing something cool."

"The Fountain," called out another.

Ariston lifted his hand again, and after beating a measure struck a clear high note; he held the note during a measure and then his voice came tumbling down the scale in bursts of semitones relieved by tonic spaces, with a variety that reminded me of the Shepherd's song in "Tristan and Isolde." The moment he left the first high note it was taken up by another voice during the full measure, and as soon as the second voice dropped down the scale, a third one pitched the high note again, and so on voice after voice, the high note imaging the highest point of the jet d'eau, and every voice dropping tumultuously down into a placid pool of infinite variety below. Lydia did not attempt the high note, but beginning low kept at the low level in peaceful contrast to the sparkling tenors and sopranos, the whole musical structure resting on the bass which moved ponderously and contrapuntally against the contraltos.

How shall I tell the thoughts that crowded upon me as, lying on my back, I listened to this amazing harmony! The beginning reminded me of one of Palestrina's masses and transported me to a Christmas midnight at the church of St. Gervais; but as soon as the intention of the strain became clear to me, I felt that it belonged to the open air, to the eternal spaces, to the new-mown hay, to my radiant companions. The merriment of it, its complexity, its wholesomeness, the delight it gave—all brought to a focus and intensified the interest that was growing within me for Lydia.

But the whole party rose now to begin work on another hillside and Lydia turned to me with:

"Why do you stay with us? Why not go to the Hall? You will find the Pater there; we call him the Pater because he is the father of the settlement. He will want to talk to you, and you need to talk to him." She put an arch little emphasis on the word "need." Evidently she did not want me to be loitering among them. I pretended to adopt her suggestion with alacrity although in my heart I wished nothing but to remain with her.

"Yes," I said, "I shall never get out of my bewilderment unless I talk to some one who can understand my point of view."

"And you will probably find Chairo there," she added, with a provoking smile. "He was to arrive to-day."

Ariston pricked his ear:

"Ah!" he said. "You will enjoy meeting Chairo; he is the leader of our Radical party; he is in favor of all sorts of Radical measures—such as the destruction of the Cult—" the women looked at one another—"the respect of private property——"

"What! Do you call the respect of private property Radical?" asked I. "It was the shibboleth of the Conservatives in my time; they called it the 'sacredness of private property.'"

"Just as the Demetrians speak of the 'sacredness' of the Cult to-day," said Ariston.

"Whenever Hypocrisy wants to preserve an abuse she calls it Sacred," said a strong voice at my elbow. I turned and saw that a new companion had been added to us, and I guessed at once that it was Chairo.

He was a splendid man; nothing was wanting to him—stature, nor beauty, nor strength. He was remarkable, too, by the fact that his face was clean shaved, whereas all the other men I had met wore beards; but his face bore a likeness so striking to that of Augustus that to have hidden it by a beard would have been a desecration. And he