"Yes, Joan saw to that."
"And the nights. Do you remember how sweet the perfumes were—the heather and the wild thyme? Those long cool nights, Cissy, when we watched the lights flicker out one by one, and the corncrakes and the barn owl came and made music for us."
"It is like a beautiful picture, the memory," she murmured.
"Build a fence around and keep it," he said. "Life there was an abstraction, but a beautiful one. London has made man and woman of us, but are we any happier, I wonder?"
"I am," she answered simply.
"You are happy because you have not grasped at shadows," he said, bitterly. "You have taken the good which has come, and been thankful."
"And you," she replied, softly, "you are known already. In a few months' time you will be famous."
"Ay, but shall I be happy?" he asked himself, only half aloud.
"If you will," she answered. "If you have spent any of your time grasping at shadows, be thankful at least that you are man enough to realise it and put them from you. Life should be a full thing for you. Douglas, I think that you are wonderful. All that we dreamed of for you has come true."
He looked into her face with a sudden intensity—a pretty face enough, flushed and earnest.