Poppy found her room without any difficulty. On opening the first door on the first landing and looking in, she recognised her books, and the faded yellow silk counterpane with the border of red poppies worked by Kykie in past days. She took off her hat and surveyed the room with contentment. Her cushions were in her chairs; her books in their accustomed book-shelves; her long mirror with the slim gilt frame hung between two windows that gave upon the balcony; her writing-table stood opposite the mirror where she could look up and see herself as she wrote. Her brown print of Monna Lisa was above her dressing-table, and her silver cross with the ivory Christ nailed to it hung over her head—
"To keep a maid from harm!"
There were no pictures on the pale gold walls: only three wonderful drawings of herself, done in grey and blue and scarlet chalk on sheets of rough-edged common brown paper and fastened up by drawing-pins. These were the work of Luce Abinger.
She observed that all the bowls and vases were filled with green leaves—no flowers. Kykie and the boys knew that green leaves were dearer to her than flowers.
Presently she rose and went to the mirror on the wall. Her hair did not quite please her, so she took out two little gold side-combs and ran them through it, until it branched out characteristically once more. She performed this ceremony on an average of twenty times a day, and always with a look of the frankest pleasure at the sight of herself.
"How nice my hair is!" she thought, "and how glad I am that it branches out in that fascinating way that just suits my face! If it were any other kind of hair, sleek, or smooth, or curly, I should not look nearly so charming."
Later she stepped into the balcony. The sun still glared, but the place was full of dim coolness, for its roof was massed with clematis and Virginia creeper, and heavy curtains of creeper hung from roof to rail; but long openings had been cut in the greenery to afford a view of the town and sea. Over the tops of the trees, far away below, beyond many white houses and gardens and a shining beach, was the Indian Ocean. It lay very still and splendid: a vast sheet of Sèvres enamel with a trivial frill of white at its edges, like the lace froth at the bottom of a woman's ball-gown. When storms sweep the Natal coast, that still shining sea can boom and roar and flash like a thousand cannons bombarding the town; but on the day that Poppy Destin first looked at it from her balcony, it was as still and flat as a sea on a map.
Long, long thoughts were hers as she stood gazing there; and the best of them all was that she was back once more in the land where the roots of her heart were planted deep.
While she stood lost in her reveries, Luce Abinger passed through the garden below, walking noiselessly across the green lawns. He saw her dreaming there, in her white gown with the scarlet flower flaming at her breast, and his tormented face became even less lovely. At that time his mood resembled the mood of Job when he desired to curse God and die.
Poppy, becoming hungry, went down to look for lunch. She found the master of the house already seated, beating and jangling his forks together, a habit of his when he was impatient. He never touched his knives. Poppy had come to the conclusion that, like James I, he had some reason to hate and fear naked blades.