“At least, it would be uninteresting. She is polite to the Reverend John Powers.”
“I haven’t met him yet.”
“Not yet. But you can never tell when you may meet him.”
She bent over her flowers again. Barnes tried to collect his thoughts. He hadn’t got very far with that beginning.
“The thing that impressed both your father and me about Carl—” he began.
She lifted her head once more.
“Yes?” she inquired sweetly.
If he could only paint her as she stood now—as though she were growing in the garden! So few women really get up until after lunch, but she—she, like the poppies, awoke with the kiss of the sun into her full beauty. There was no trace of the night about her. All her dreams were tucked away in the long gallery with her pictures. Yesterday was one with ten thousand yesterdays and she was as though new born for this day alone. This was especially true of her eyes. As the planets bear no trace of the eternal cycles through which they have ranged, but come each night new created, so her eyes were almost abstract in their freshness.
“I suppose,” she said, to break the silence, “I suppose I ought to take Aladdin out to-day. He’s been shut up in his stall for a week now.”
Yesterday he would have protested. Now he basely betrayed his trust.