“What is blindness to me?” cried Philippe le Gai to the golden sun. “What is blindness to me, who hold my light against my heart?”
GREEN GARDENS
Daphne was singing to herself when she came through the painted gate in the back wall. She was singing partly because it was June, and Devon, and she was seventeen, and partly because she had caught a breath-taking glimpse of herself in the long mirror as she had flashed through the hall at home, and it seemed almost too good to be true that the radiant small person in the green muslin frock with the wreath of golden hair bound about her head and the sea-blue eyes laughing back at her was really Miss Daphne Chiltern. Incredible, incredible luck to look like that, half Dryad, half Kate Greenaway—she danced down the turf path to the herb garden, swinging her great wicker basket and singing like a mad thing.
“He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon,” carolled Daphne, all her ribbons flying,
“He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon,
He promised to buy me a bonnie blue ribbon
To tie up——”
The song stopped as abruptly as though someone had struck it from her lips. A strange man was kneeling by the beehive in the herb garden. He was looking at her over his shoulder, at once startled and amused, and she saw that he was wearing a rather shabby tweed suit and that his face was brown against his close-cropped tawny hair. He smiled, his teeth a strong flash of white.
“Hello!” he greeted her, in a tone at once casual and friendly.
Daphne returned the smile uncertainly. “Hello,” she replied gravely.
The strange man rose easily to his feet, and she saw that he was very tall and carried his head rather splendidly, like the young bronze Greek in Uncle Roland’s study at home. But his eyes—his eyes were strange—quite dark and burned out. The rest of him looked young and vivid and adventurous, but his eyes looked as though the adventure were over, though they were still questing.