"I think she wants to see me. Her letters are very sad. They sound as if she wanted to see me very much, don't they mammy? Somebody has to read them to me because I can read only plain writing. How long will it be, Miss Meade, before I can read any kind, even the sort where the letters all look just alike and go right into one another?"
"Soon, dear. You are getting on beautifully. Now I'll run into my room, and put on my uniform. You like me in uniform, don't you?"
"I like you any way," answered Letty politely. "You always look so fresh, just like a sparkling shower, Cousin Daisy says. She means the sort of shower you have in summer when the sun shines on the rain."
Going into her room, Caroline bathed her face in cold water, and brushed her hair until it rolled in a shining curve back from her forehead. She was just slipping into her uniform when there was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Timberlake said, without looking in,
"David has come home, and he has asked for you. Will you go down to the library?"
"In one minute. I am ready." Her voice was clear and firm; but, as she left the room and passed slowly down the staircase, by the copy of the Sistine Madonna, by the ivory walls of the hall and the pink walls of the drawing-room, she understood how the women felt who rode in the tumbril to the guillotine. It was the hardest hour of her life, and she must summon all the courage of her spirit to meet it. Then she remembered her father's saying, that after the worst had happened, one began to take things easier, and an infusion of strength flowed from her mind into her heart and her limbs. If the worst was before her now, in a little while it would be over—in a little while she could pass on to hospital wards, and the sounds of the battlefield, and the external horrors that would release her from the torment of personal things.
The door of the library was open, and Blackburn stood in the faint sunshine by the window—in the very spot where he had stood on the night when she had gone to tell him that Angelica had ordered her car to go to the tableaux. As she entered, he crossed the room and held her hand for an instant; then, turning together, they passed through the window, and out on the brick terrace. All the way down the stairs she had wondered what she should say to him in the beginning; but now, while they stood there in the golden light, high above the June splendour of the rose garden, she said only,
"Oh, how lovely it is! How lovely!"
He was looking at her closely. "You are working too hard. Your eyes are tired."
"I must go on working. What is there in the world except work?" Though she tried to speak brightly, there was a ripple of sadness in her voice. Her eyes were on the garden, and it seemed to her that it blazed suddenly with an intolerable beauty—a beauty that hurt her quivering senses like sound. All the magic loveliness of the roses, all the reflected wonder and light and colour of the sunset, appeared to mingle and crash through her brain, like the violent crescendo of some triumphant music. She had not wanted colour; she had attuned her life to grey days and quiet backgrounds, and the stark forms of things that were without warmth or life. But beauty, she felt, was unendurable—beauty was what she had not reckoned with in her world.