“It’s no good thinking you can deceive me,” she went on. “You can’t. I understand you.” Chelifer sighed, inwardly; she had said that before, more than once. “Shall I tell you what you are really like?”
“Do.”
“Well, to begin with,” she said, “you’re sensitive, just as sensitive as I am. I can see that in your face, in your actions. I can hear it when you speak. You can pretend to be hard and … and … armour-plated, but I….”
Wearily, but with patience, Chelifer listened. Mrs. Aldwinkle’s hesitating voice, moving up and down from note to unrelated note, sounded in his ears. The words became blurred and vague. They lost their articulateness and sense. They were no more than the noise of the wind, a sound that accompanied, but did not interrupt his thoughts. Chelifer’s thoughts, at the moment, were poetical. He was engaged in putting the finishing touches to a little “Mythological Incident,” the idea of which had recently occurred to him and to which, during the last two days, he had been giving its definite form. Now it was finished; a little polishing, that was all it needed now.
Through the pale skeleton of woods
Orion walks. The north wind lays
Its cold lips to the twin steel flutes
That are his gun and plays.
Knee-deep he goes where, penny-wiser
Than all his kind who steal and hoard,