They both tried to talk of ordinary things for the few moments before that meal was announced, and then some kind of devilment seemed to come into Amaryllis—nothing could have been more seductive or alluring than her manner, while keeping to strict convention. The bright pink colour glowed in her cheeks and her eyes sparkled. She could not have accounted for her mood herself. It was one of excitement and interest.
Denzil had the hardest fight he had ever been through, and he grew almost gruff in consequence. He was really suffering.
He admired the way she acted as hostess, and the way the home was done. He hardly felt anything else, though apart from her he would have been interested in his first view of Ardayre, but she absorbed all other emotions, he only knew that he desired to make passionate love to her, or to get away as quickly as he could.
"Are you going to remain here all the winter?" he asked her presently, as they rose from the table, "or shall you go to London? You will be awfully lonely, won't you, if you stay here?"
"I love the country and I am growing to love and understand the place. John wants me to so much, it means more to him than anything else in the world. I shall remain until after Christmas anyway. But come now, I want just to take you into the church, because there are two such fine tombs there of both our ancestors, yours and mine. We can go out of the windows and come back for coffee in the cedar parlour."
Denzil acquiesced; he wished to see the church. They reached it in a minute or two and Amaryllis opened the door with her own key and led him on up the aisle to the recumbent knights—and then she whispered their history to him, standing where a ray of sunlight turned her brown hair into gold.
"I wonder what their lives were," Denzil said, "and if they lived and loved and fought their desires—as we do now—the younger one's face looks as though he had not always conquered his. Stépan would say his indulgences had become his masters, not his servants, I expect."
"Verisschenzko is wonderful—he makes one want to be strong," and Amaryllis sighed. "I wonder how many of us even begin to fight our desires—"
"One has to be strong always if one wants to attain—but sometimes it is only honour which holds one—and weaklings are so pitiful."
"What is honour?" Her eyes searched his face wistfully. "Is it being true to some canon of the laws of chivalry, or is it being true to some higher thing in one's own soul?"