“Do you know,” he asked, “how, after this, I shall always personify faith to myself?”
“Faith?”
“Yes. I shall see her as a smiling girl dressed in white, and walking among white flowers in the sunlight. I have guessed you, you see. The key-note of your life is a question.”
“Do you call the asking of a question, faith?” Felicia smiled.
“It’s faith to think it worth asking.”
Geoffrey Daunt was strolling in front of the house when they reached it. He looked at the two young people as they approached him with his observant, impersonal gaze. Felicia, in a mingled state of mind, happy, yet touched, even troubled, felt, as she met his gaze, a quick leap of almost antagonism. There was no criticism in it, no surprise or displeasure, yet her intuition told her that something in it commented unfavourably upon her companionship with Maurice. And with the intuition came a delightful throb of power. He was her friend, and she would keep him so. Already this first step into life seemed to have brought her among dumb contests. She would stand staunch and keep what was hers. Really, Mr. Daunt’s head, so high against the blue sky, with its classic white and gold, was ridiculously handsome. She nodded a smiling au revoir to Maurice and left them.
The two young men walked slowly along the gravel path towards the garden. Maurice was silent. With his head thrown back, his hands clasped behind him, he smiled as though over some grave, delightful secret. Reticence was an unusual symptom in Maurice.
“That’s a very pretty girl,” Geoffrey observed, reflecting on the symptom.
Maurice’s shoulders drew together with a gesture of irritable repudiation.
“Pretty! Don’t be so trivial!”