"Come in," I invited him. "Much obliged to you and Phillida for looking me up! I had been working late and dropped asleep in my chair, with a nightmare as the result."
It was pleasant to have his normal presence, prosaic in bathrobe and pajamas, in my cheerfully lighted room. His dark eyes glanced toward the music-scrawled papers scattered about, then returned to meet my eyes smilingly.
"We heard some of that work," he admitted. "Phil and I—well, I guess we were guilty of sitting on the stairs to hear you play it over. I never listened to a tune that took hold of me, kind of, like that one. We'd certainly prize hearing all of it together, sometime, if you didn't mind."
The warmth of achievement flowed again in me. I crossed to the piano to assemble the finished sheets, answering him with one of those expressions of thanks artists use to cloak modestly their sleek inward vanity. I was really grateful for this first criticism that soothed me back to the reality of my own world.
Across the top of the uppermost sheet of music, in small, square script quaint as the pomander, was written a quotation strange to me:
"We walk upon the shadows of hills across a level thrown, and pant like climbers."
I did not know that I had read the words aloud until Vere answered them.
"So we do! I guess there is more panting over shadows and less real mountain-climbing done by us humans than most folks would believe. Most roads turn off to easy ways before we reach the hills we make such a fuss about. Who wrote that, Mr. Locke?"
"I don't know," I replied vaguely, intent upon Desire Michell's meaning in leaving this to me.
He nodded, and turned leisurely to go.