A delightful, fairy thought sped across his mind with wings of gold, waving through the dusk of his soul a spray of leaves from a silver birch tree that he knew, and disappearing into those depths of consciousness where feelings never clothe themselves in precise language. A line of poetry swam up and took its place mysteriously—
My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,
Flit to the silent world and other summers,
With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.
Could it be, then, that he had given his heart so utterly, so exquisitely, into the keeping of a little child?...
At any rate, before he reached the drawing-room, he understood that what he had been so busy dressing up was not anything half so trumpery as his mere external body and appearance. It was his interior person. That black tie, properly made for once, was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace; only, having forgotten, or possibly never heard the phrase, he could not make use of it!
‘It’s that little, sandy-haired witch after all!’ he thought to himself. ‘Joan’s coming—a woman’s coming—has made me realise it. I must behave my best, and look my best. It’s my soul dressing up for Nixie, I do declare!’
CHAPTER XXI
Persons with real force of purpose carry about with them something that charges unconsciously the atmosphere of others. Paul ‘felt’ this woman. The first impact of her presence, as has been seen, came almost as a shock. The ‘shocks,’ however, did not continue—as such. Her influence worked in him underground, as it were.
She slipped easily and naturally into the quiet routine of the little household in the Grey House under the hill, till it seemed as if she had been there always. Margaret had insisted at once that there could be no ‘Missing’ and ‘Mistering’; Dick’s niece must be Joan, and her brother Paul; and the more familiar terms of address were adopted without effort on both sides.