Miss Holbrook laughed.
"Well, they were; and really" persisted the boy, in answer to the merriment in her eyes; "now wouldn't it be nice to be like the sundial, and forget everything the sun didn't shine on? Would n't you like it? Isn't there anything YOU want to forget?"
Miss Holbrook sobered instantly. The change in her face was so very marked, indeed, that involuntarily David looked about for something that might have cast upon it so great a shadow. For a long minute she did not speak; then very slowly, very bitterly, she said aloud—yet as if to herself:—
"Yes. If I had my way I'd forget them every one—these hours; every single one!"
"Oh, Lady of the Roses!" expostulated David in a voice quivering with shocked dismay. "You don't mean—you can't mean that you don't have ANY—sun!"
"I mean just that," bowed Miss Holbrook wearily, her eyes on the somber shadows of the pool; "just that!"
David sat stunned, confounded. Across the marble steps and the terraces the shadows lengthened, and David watched them as the sun dipped behind the tree-tops. They seemed to make more vivid the chill and the gloom of the lady's words—more real the day that had no sun. After a time the boy picked up his violin and began to play, softly, and at first with evident hesitation. Even when his touch became more confident, there was still in the music a questioning appeal that seemed to find no answer—an appeal that even the player himself could not have explained.
For long minutes the young woman and the boy sat thus in the twilight. Then suddenly the woman got to her feet.
"Come, come, boy, what can I be thinking of?" she cried sharply. "I must go in and you must go home. Good-night." And she swept across the grass to the path that led toward the house.