At last the long leisurely tea of Sunday afternoon in a country-house came to an end. People strayed out into the grounds, a little green and golden world of peace it was!
I heard Colonel Fielding's velvet voice murmuring "Carissima——"
This was his pet name for his sweetheart. She called him "Falconer." The pair of them wandered off together and disappeared with the swift and utter completeness possible only to lovers—or to small boys who are called to have their faces washed.
The others drifted towards the water-garden, or to inspect the vegetables which were Sybil's domain; Sybil, the garden-girl, was entirely one of the family here.
Muriel (of course) called to Dick Holiday to come and translate the motto on the sun-dial for her.
And then, suddenly, I found a figure in khaki with soft dark eyes under a scarlet-banded cap, edging purposefully towards me in a manner that recalled a year now dead.
How often I had longed in vain for this to happen! What fruitless tears I'd shed! And now—— Oh, why do people pine, after long years to see their first loves again? It is, nearly always, a mistake to meet them any more.... It is a wash-out!
Shakespere's most characteristic lover puts it all in a nutshell.
"Enough, no more!
'Tis not as sweet now as it was before."
But Harry Markham, whom I had once thought such a man of the world, had less savoir vivre than the Count Orsino.