Now when she was dressed she went to the window and leaned out. This view from Trensome Hall—the lawns frosted with dew, the near trees framing a long strip of sky, the early sunlight sparkling on jewel-like bands of flowers—was sweet and intimate. And hardly had she breathed in the chill freshness of the young day when her eyes met Maurice Wynne’s.
He was strolling below, finding evidently her own enjoyment. He waved his hand, smiling his good-morning, and Felicia, leaning out to smile at him, white among the creepers, felt the picturesque fitness of this beginning to a day, surely to be a happy one.
“Come down,” said Maurice. “How good of you to be up early. Let us have a walk before breakfast; we have heaps of time.”
Felicia needed no urging. She had intended to walk by herself, but a walk with this companion would be as different from ordinary walks as playing to him had been from playing to her accustomed audience. He was waiting for her at the small side-door, and they crossed the wet lawns and the glittering shrubberies, and left formality behind them in the deep lanes that led to the woods and that smelt of the damp, sweet earth. As they went he talked, mainly about himself, with an altogether un-English ease and equally without awkwardness or vanity. He talked of his work, of his friends, of his travels and point of view—as far as he could be said to have one. He seemed to be turning under her eyes the pages of a tender, whimsical, very modern book; counting so wonderfully upon her understanding. He took things very easily, at least thought most things only worth easy taking; yet there was something in that reckless eye, a restlessness, and, under its caressing smile, a melancholy, that made her think that something, perhaps, he might take hard.
“Do you ever have moods of despondency—despair?” he asked her, as they went through a winding path among the woods. Despair and despondency were black and alien things to speak of here, where the very shadows were happy, and where there was ecstasy in the sunlit vault of blue seen far above, beyond the sparkling green.
“Moods? No; I don’t think so,” said Felicia; “but I am sometimes horribly discontented—and when I am I can’t imagine anything that would content me.”
“Not anything?”
“Not anything—except everything. I mean being sure that everything is significant, worth while.”
“But it is worth while as long as it lasts.”
“But it doesn’t last!” She smiled round at him, for she was leading the way in the narrow path, and the white flounces of her dress brushed wet grasses on either side. “The sense of impermanence often poisons the worth.” She added, “Do you have moods?”