“You know that I’d never——”
“You wouldn’t at once. But after a little you’d see. Time makes things so painfully clear. Never mind. Now that I’ve told you, I’m sure that you won’t let me down.” She whipped her hands away and put them behind her back. “And now be nice to me, Toby, and give me a cigarette.”
Twenty-four hours had gone by, and the two were sitting again on the rolling moor.
An urchin breeze darted and hung, Puck-like, in the brave sunshine, while earth and sky and sea lifted up radiant heads. Time nodded drowsily over a golden world.
From a little fellowship of chestnuts in a neighbouring dell the pert insistence of a cuckoo cheered to the echo the excellence of present mirth. Out of the sweetness of a hawthorn a fragrant eulogy of idleness stole upon the air. The lazy hum of bees about their business swore by content.
Miss Voile, however, was not smiling, while Rage was regarding the jovial landscape with a perfectly poisonous stare.
“How,” said Cicely, “are you getting on?”
Toby started and picked up a writing-pad.
“Give me a chance,” he said. “I’m not a journalist. Besides, a letter like this takes some composing.”