'The Mary Coleridge Poems,' she said carelessly. 'Tony gave it me. You'll find the song he put to music.'
Tom vigorously turned the leaves. He had already glanced at the title-page with the small inscription in one corner: 'To L. J., from A. W.' There was a pencil mark against a poem half-way through.
'He's going to write music for some of the others too,' she added, watching him; 'the ones he has marked.' Her voice, he fancied, wavered slightly.
Tom nodded his head. 'I see,' he murmured, noticing a cross in pencil. A sullen defiance rose in his blood, but he forced it out of sight. He read the words in a low voice to himself. It was astonishing how the powers behind the scenes forced a contribution from the commonest incidents:
The sum of loss I have not reckoned yet, I cannot tell
. For ever it was morning when we met,
Night when we bade farewell.
The sum of loss I have not reckoned yet, I cannot tell
. For ever it was morning when we met,
Night when we bade farewell.
Perhaps the words let loose the emotion, though of different kinds, pent up behind their silence. The strain, at any rate, between them tightened first, then seemed to split. He kept his eyes upon the page before him; Lettice, too, remained still as before; only her lips moved as she spoke:
'Tom.…' The voice plunged into his heart like iron.
'Yes,' he said quietly, without looking up.
'Tom,' she repeated, 'what are you thinking about so hard?'