“Yes,” said Mr. Flushing.  “And in my opinion,” he continued, “the absence of population to which Hirst objects is precisely the significant touch.  You must admit, Hirst, that a little Italian town even would vulgarise the whole scene, would detract from the vastness—­the sense of elemental grandeur.”  He swept his hands towards the forest, and paused for a moment, looking at the great green mass, which was now falling silent.  “I own it makes us seem pretty small—­us, not them.”  He nodded his head at a sailor who leant over the side spitting into the river.  “And that, I think, is what my wife feels, the essential superiority of the peasant—­” Under cover of Mr. Flushing’s words, which continued now gently reasoning with St. John and persuading him, Terence drew Rachel to the side, pointing ostensibly to a great gnarled tree-trunk which had fallen and lay half in the water.  He wished, at any rate, to be near her, but he found that he could say nothing.  They could hear Mr. Flushing flowing on, now about his wife, now about art, now about the future of the country, little meaningless words floating high in air.  As it was becoming cold he began to pace the deck with Hirst.  Fragments of their talk came out distinctly as they passed—­art, emotion, truth, reality.

“Is it true, or is it a dream?” Rachel murmured, when they had passed.

“It’s true, it’s true,” he replied.

But the breeze freshened, and there was a general desire for movement.  When the party rearranged themselves under cover of rugs and cloaks, Terence and Rachel were at opposite ends of the circle, and could not speak to each other.  But as the dark descended, the words of the others seemed to curl up and vanish as the ashes of burnt paper, and left them sitting perfectly silent at the bottom of the world.  Occasional starts of exquisite joy ran through them, and then they were peaceful again.

Chapter XXI

Thanks to Mr. Flushing’s discipline, the right stages of the river were reached at the right hours, and when next morning after breakfast the chairs were again drawn out in a semicircle in the bow, the launch was within a few miles of the native camp which was the limit of the journey.  Mr. Flushing, as he sat down, advised them to keep their eyes fixed on the left bank, where they would soon pass a clearing, and in that clearing, was a hut where Mackenzie, the famous explorer, had died of fever some ten years ago, almost within reach of civilisation—­Mackenzie, he repeated, the man who went farther inland than any one’s been yet.  Their eyes turned that way obediently.  The eyes of Rachel saw nothing.  Yellow and green shapes did, it is true, pass before them, but she only knew that one was large and another small; she did not know that they were trees.  These directions to look here and there irritated her, as interruptions irritate a person absorbed in thought, although she was not thinking of anything.