The bishop looked over the gate.  An air of friendly seclusion reigned in this place.  There was no pretence at a garden—­not so much as a rose tree or a snapdragon; the vines, of daintiest green but sternly utilitarian, clambered up to the door-lintel, invading the very roof.  He pictured to himself the interior.  Bare walls and floorings, a print or two, a few trunks and packing cases utilized as seats, a bookshelf, a plain table littered with manuscripts; somewhere, in that further room, a camp bedstead whereon this man of single aim and purpose, this monk of literature, was even then at rest like all sensible folks, and dreaming—­dreaming, presumably, of foot-notes.  Happy mortal!  Free from all superfluities and encumbrances of the flesh!  Enviable mortal!  He reduced earthly existence to its simplest and most effective terms; he owed no man anything; he kept alive, on a miserable income, the sacred flame of enthusiasm.  To aspire, that was the secret of life.  Thinking thus, Mr. Heard began to understand the bibliographer’s feeling for Mrs. Meadows.  She lived for her child—­he for his work.  They were alike; calm and self-contained, both of them; incapable of illusions, of excesses in thought or conduct.

Without the doorway, in a small triangle of shade, sat is fox-terrier, alert, head poised on one side in knowing fashion, ready to bark if the visitors only touched the handle of the gate.  Denis remarked: 

“He told me that dog was sick the other morning, just like Keith.”

“It had probably been eating something.  I suppose they couldn’t be unwell, could they?  What a heat, Denis!  It’s addling my old brains.  More slowly, please.”

An hour went by.  Fatigue was beginning to tell upon Mr. Heard.  They had left he cultivated ground behind and were now ascending, by a cindery track of pumice-stone, among grotesque blocks of lava and scoriae that glowed like molten metal.  Tufts of flowery broom scented the air.  The soil, so recently drenched by the miraculous shower of rain, was once more dry and dusty; its fragile flowers wilted in the sirocco.  And still the young man marched ahead.  Always upwards!  The landscape grew more savage.  They bent round a corner and gound themselves skirting a precipice.  The bishop glanced down in trepidation.  There lay the sea, with not a boat in sight.  As he continued to look the horizon oscillated; the ground sank under his feet and blue waters seemed to heave and rise up towards him.  He shut his eyes in a fit of dizziness and grasped a rock.  Its burning touch revived him.

Then on again.  Always upwards.

“Do walk a little more slowly,” said the bishop, puffing and wiping his face.  “We must be well above the level of the Old Town by this time.  A wild scramble.  How much higher are we going?”

“Here we are.  This is the place I meant.”

“Charming, I must say!  But aren’t we a little too near the edge of the cliff?  It makes me feel funny, as if I were in a balloon.”