And indeed the group of houses which Mrs Ravenhill was drawing made a perfectly harmonious note of colour. The sky delicate broken grey, the hill behind, grey also, running down in fine outline; against this a group of houses, red-roofed one or two, timber-pitched another, gabled, white-plastered, jutting out, running back, and set in waving emerald rye. Where the rye ended, long flowery grass began, and grew down to the foot of the bank where the children were playing. A woman with a white handkerchief on her head, and carrying two pails with a yoke, came down the little path which the thick grass hid from view; the swift-driven clouds cast swift soft shadows, the air was sweet with hay-making.
Wareham was in the state of mind when this soothed, because it seemed apart from the world of men and women, as represented by Mrs Martyn. He had gone to her feeling that the dearest part of him was sacredly wrapped up and invisible, and with shaking shoulders she had plucked it forth, and given him to understand that she knew all about it. The man must be more than usually magnanimous who does not chafe at insight from which he suffers. Here were women who made no pretence at insight. With them he felt healthfully at ease. And so scaly-strong is the coating behind which we flatter ourselves we are entrenched, that nothing could have more amazed him than to know that Millie, simple soul, read through him as easily as, and more truly than Mrs Martyn. He said suddenly at last—
“How do you return to England, Mrs Ravenhill?”
“Not as we came.” She shuddered. “The Ceylon tourist steamer will be here to-day. I am told that she is an old P. and O., and very comfortable, and that we can get berths in her.”
“But you don’t go on board to-day?” Brace himself he must, but hardly to the extent of leaving so abruptly.
“No. We shall meet her at Bergen on Friday.”
He asked to be allowed to take their berths, and let fall something to the effect that if there was another to spare, he might secure it for himself.
“You will have had a short holiday.” Mrs Ravenhill added a little vermilion to her roofs, and sighed hopelessly over the flowery grass. Millie tried to check her heart’s throb.
“You come to Fjaerland to-day?” she hazarded.
They were all to go, it appeared, and Wareham agreed eagerly. What did it matter so long as he refrained from a word? Of course he would go. He sunned himself in the anticipation.