"Ah," she said. "I forgot that I must not talk. Indeed, I did not mean to, but—look!"
I followed her eyes.
"Well," I said, "tell me what you see."
"There are so many beautiful things," she murmured. "Do you see how thick and green the grass is in the meadows there? How the quaker grasses glimmer?—you call them so, do you not?—and how those yellow cowslips shine like gold? What a world of colour it all seems. London is so grey and cold, and here—look at the sea, and the sky, with all those dear little fleecy white clouds, and the pink and white of all those wild roses wound in and out of the hedges. Oh, Arnold, it is all beautiful!"
"Even without a motor-car!" I remarked.
She looked at me a little resentfully.
"Motoring is very delightful," she said, "although you do not like it. Of course, it would be nice if Arthur were here!"
She looked away from me seawards, and I found myself studying her expression with an interest which had something more in it than mere curiosity. At odd times lately I had fancied that I could see it coming. To-day, for the first time, I was sure. The smooth transparency of childhood, the unrestrained but almost animal play of features and eyes, reproducing with photographic accuracy every small emotion and joy—these things were passing away. Even before her time the child was seeking knowledge. As she sat there, with her steadfast eyes fixed upon the smooth blue line where sea and sky met, who could tell what thoughts were passing in her mind? Not I, not Mabane, nor any of us into whose care she had come. Only I knew that she saw new things, that the rush of a more complex and stronger life was already troubling her, the sweet pangs of its birth were already tugging at her heartstrings. My pencil rested idly in my fingers, my eyes, like hers, sought that distant line, beyond which lies ever the world of one's own creation. What did she see there, I wondered? Never again should I be able to ask with the full certainty of knowing all that was in her mind. The time had come for delicate reserves, the time when the child of yesterday, with the first faint notes of a new and wonderful song stealing into her heart, must fence her new modesty around with many sweet elusions and barriers, fairy creations to be swept aside later on in one glad moment—by the one chosen person. There was a coldness in my heart when I realized that the time had come even for the child who had tripped so lightly into our lives so short a time ago, to pass away from us into that other and more complex world. It was the decree of sex, nature's immutable law, sundering playfellows, severing friendships, driving its unwilling victims into opposite corners of the world, with all the pitilessness of natural law. Nevertheless, the thought of these things as I looked at Isobel made me sad. She was young indeed for these days to come, for the shadows to steal into her eyes, and the song of trouble to grow in her heart.
"Tell me," I asked softly, "what you see beyond that blue line."
"I can tell you more easily," she said, glancing down with a faint smile at my empty pages, "what I see by my side—a very lazy man. And," she continued, crumpling a little ball of heather in her fingers and throwing it with unerring aim at Allan, "another one over there!"