"As you say," remarked Heaton blandly, "she does it rather charmingly."
Paul roused himself with an effort.
"Half-past three," he said, looking at his watch. "Didn't you promise to go and look at the Rector's coins some time this afternoon?"
And in another five minutes he had joined Katharine in the summer-house.
CHAPTER V
The summer house was set far back in the shrubbery, and although hidden from the house by laurels and box-trees, was open at the front to a stretch of brightly coloured flower beds and trimly cut grass. It was a glorious day in May, and spring in its fulness was come. The white fruit blossoms had given place to crumpled green leaves, and the early summer flowers were in bud. Paul Wilton lay on a low basket chair, where he had flung himself down after making his escape from his garrulous friend; and at his feet, with an open book on her lap, sat Katharine. Obviously, a great many poor women had lost a great many babies, since the day she had sat on the chair at the end of his bed and talked about her favourite poets, for the book on her lap was only a pretence to which neither of them paid the least attention, and their conversation was of a purely personal nature, the kind of conversation that has no subject and no epigrams, and is carried on in half-finished sentences.
"I am beginning to understand why you don't paint or write or do things, although you know such a lot about them," observed Katharine, half closing her eyes and making a picture of the square of sunlit garden as she saw it framed in the woodwork of the summer-house door.
Paul smiled. It was very pleasant to be told by this child of Nature that he knew "such a lot about things."
"Tell me why," was all he said, however.
"I think it is because it puts you in a position to criticise every one else. It makes you so superior, in a sort of way. Oh, bother! I never can explain things. But don't you see, if you were a painter yourself, you couldn't say that there was only one painter living, as you do now. Could you?"