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-Hve 

 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 



