SILENCE AND MUSIC 145 



flights of the greatest diva on earth. Not that the 

 mere pleasure to the sense would not be vastly greater 

 in the latter case ; but in the other the voice, though 

 but of a peasant saying some simple thing, would also 

 say something to the mind, and would live and re-live 

 in the mind, to be heard again and often, even after 

 years ; and with other similar voices it would serve to 

 nourish and keep alive a dream. And after all a 

 dream may be a man's best possession ; though it be 

 but of an immeasurably remote future a time when 

 these tentative growths, called art, and valued as the 

 highest good attainable the bright consummate 

 flower of intellect shall have withered, and, like 

 tendrils no longer needed, dropped forgotten from 

 the human plant. 



One such voice I heard to my great delight in or 

 near a hamlet not many miles from Singleton in the 

 West Sussex Downs. Sauntering along the path in a 

 quiet green very pretty place, I spied a girl pushing a 

 perambulator with a baby in it before her, using one 

 hand, while in the other hand she held an apple, 

 which she was just beginning to eat. It was a very 

 big apple, all of the purest apple green colour except 

 where she had bitten into it, and there it was snowy 

 white. She was a slim, gracefully-formed girl of about 

 fifteen, with the Sussex round face and fine features, 

 but with a different colour, for her skin was a clear 

 dark one, her eyes soft deep blue, and her unbound 

 hair, which was very abundant and very fine, was 



K 



