He came back after giving his horse to the boy, with a brighter and sweeter look on his face than it often wore. “May I look first at the drawing? What have you found out about the moor flowers?”
“Oh, they are so difficult—look at those harebells on the top of the road, swinging about in the wind—blue against blue. It is such heavenly colour. But I can’t paint them! I haven’t begun to try. I’m seeing them!”
“I see,” said Guy. “Yes, the sky seems to show through. But what do they say? Your pictures all say something. Are they moor spirits?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t think I quite know. But what I want to say is ‘living blue,’—you know the hymn?—
”‘Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
All dressed in living green.’
“That gives one such a feeling of spring.”
“Yes,” said Guy, “things growing. And ‘living blue’?”
“Well,” said Florella, looking up at the harebells, “I think it must mean thoughts—spirit, soul, growing and springing, perhaps. They are so very ethereal!”
Florella had much of Constancy’s self-possession. In her it showed in a calm simplicity of manner, absolutely without effort or constraint. Guy forgot himself also, for him a rare pleasure.
“I see,” he said, “I hope you’ll get them done.”