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and here and there was the stem and spreading plumes of a date palm. Then, too, in constantly recur-ring patches, the earth was sprouting with all kinds of vegetables ; and through the trunks of the trees shone the greenest and most luminous of grasses, respond-ing to every slightest breath of the air, with a shiver of tremulous emerald. The sky and the distant sea, both of the dreamiest blue—two shades of the same cloudless turquoise—added their magic to the scene. On the Asian coast there was a faint delicate haze, behind which the line of mountains was lost ; but now and again, high up in the sky, there appeared the flashing of some Cilician summit. The flowers, the wild thyme But I stop. Could my words be what I wish them, every one of them would be fragrant with thyme and myrtle ; the margin of every page would be a margin of breathing flowers ; and could I only convey to the reader the truth about this short journey, I should have planted for ever a new garden in his memory. Hours like these—should Ave be grateful to them ? or do Ave OAve them a grudge for mocking us ? That is not a senseless question. For half the charm of them lies beloAV the sensuous surface and beyond the luxurious meditative stir of the imagination. It lies in suggestions of some elusiA'e blessedness which might be ours if Who shall finish the sentence ? Could life give to us all that life suggests to us, there are moments Avhen one might fancy that its chief evil was death. 214 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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