Sun had now filtered through the trees; the soft carpet of mist was almost warm.
"I am no master of hounds. I am glad he got in," said Darby. "We took him unawares."
"And he'll run next year." Psyche slipped off, a glow on her small pale face; she took off her hat, her light gold hair shining.
"Next year," said Darby. Through the dreariness of futurity came a glow bright as that of the unexpected gallop. He had come to the moment when he had to chain sorrow, lest it should surprise him by running away. Life with Gheena would have been too hard a thing in its inequality.
"Next year, when Gheena is married, who will want to keep up the scratch pack?" he said slowly.
They could look down on the budding woods of Darby's old home—a sea of tender green, with the smoke from the chimneys filming blurrily in the clear air. They could see the glitter and ripple of sea, and far out the grey-green roll of unsheltered waters.
The old country, the old grey-skied land, had cast its glamour upon the girl. She wanted to live there among the childish, thriftless, and yet industrious people, who carried young hearts to their graves—where order and law did not count, and what ought to be done to-day could always be done to-morrow. And to her, Darby, limping, crippled, was man apart, perfect when he rode, seemingly part of his horses, the hunter of the hounds; every note in his voice, every look in his kind eyes, were dear to Psyche.
She must go back to trim order, to neat servants who toasted muffins admirably, but could not "slap" up cakes at five minutes' notice; to breakfast at eight-thirty and lunch at one; to sewing parties and small talk; to frigid douches of cold water thrown at that dreadful country, Ireland—a rebels' land, a land of law-breakers; to hear that hunting was not right in war times.
With her whole heart crying for the lap of the sea, for the tangle of the humping hills, the brown of the bogs, she must go.
"If I were here," she whispered, "I should want to——" She muttered something of her rebellious objection to returning to Kent.