IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 103 



from whicli tourists should observe the view. Beeeh- 

 leaves and water shimmered with a myriad flicker, 

 and the wind was warm. When we came down from 

 the knob, it was through the interlacing branches of 

 hazel and sapling ash, fresh and supple as in July, 

 and the grass was deep and fragrant. It was a 

 moment of expansion in the half-forgotten ease of 

 summer, one of the last of such moments that we were 

 to know. 



The sun struck hotly on the white strand where 

 we finally bestowed ourselves, and the wall of beech- 

 woods at our back kept out the wind. Brilliant 

 pebbles lay around, blue and yellow, pink and grey, 

 and warm to the touch, and the long shore stretched 

 its curve to where the town of Aarhus lay, dull red, 

 about its dull-red cathedral spire. All was repose 

 and mellow colour, and the Baltic lapped upon its 

 pebbles as meditatively as a lake. How was it that 

 the flavour of foreign lands was wanting in it all ? 

 It was truly the Baltic of the Vikings, the Denmark 

 of Mrs. Markliam's history, but it did not feel like it ; 

 the failure may have been in our perception, but it 

 seemed a mild, unhistoric land, where most things 

 were familiar. 



In half an hour the chestnuts took us again with 

 immense clatter through Aarhus and its small, stiff 

 suburbs to Ris Skov, a place of further beech-woods, 

 a bandstand, and a restaurant. In the latter a 

 regiment could have dined with ease — its lofty roof 

 would have mellowed the brassiest harmonics of the 

 band — and it was our fate to dine there, in unbroken 

 solitude, at four o'clock of the afternoon. The rising 

 wind moaned about the windows, and shook the trees 

 into fretful gusts, while we went slowly through flve 

 or six courses of intrinsic excellence, cooked to per- 

 fection. It was oppressive to feel the entire skill 



