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On a particular afternoon in September, about three years ago, Teresa Lane sat in a deck-chair gazing at this view. She was a pallid, long-limbed young woman of twenty-eight, and her dark, closely-cropped hair emphasised her resemblance to that lad who, whether he be unfurling a map of Toledo, or assisting at the mysterious obsequies of the Conde de Orgas, is continually appearing in the pictures of El Greco.

As she gazed, she thought of the Spanish adjective pintado, painted, which the Spaniards use for anything that is bright and lovely—flowers, views; and certainly this view was pintado, even in the English sense, in that it looked like a fresco painted on a vast white wall, motionless and enchanted against the restless, vibrating foreground. Winds from the Ural mountains, winds from the Atlantic celebrated Walpurgis-night on the lawn of Plasencia; and, on such occasions, to look through the riven garden, the swaying flowers and grasses, the tossing birch saplings, at the tranced fields of the view was to experience the same æsthetic emotion as when one looks at the picture of a great painter.