‘How astoundingly decent of you!’
‘It’s not very polite to be so surprised to find me decent,’ she said, laughing at him.
He looked with undisguised admiration into her Irish eyes. ‘By Jove, what things we could do together!’
A flame of comradeship leaped to life in Sheila. The word ‘together’ made an echoing music in her mind.
Mr. Fairfield stood before them.
‘Miss Dyrle, give me the honour. A real old-fashioned dance this time instead of these new-fangled folk things. Sir Roger de Coverley. And after that Bunny’s going to give us a tune on the fiddle.’
Later, feeling rather breathless and crumpled, she listened to Bunny’s ‘tune on the fiddle.’ She could see the violinist’s face, with a new expression in his eyes, spangled grotesquely with a red light from a fairy lamp. The moon was rising in a pale green sky. Two tall feathery trees, swaying in the gentle wind, seemed to caress each other as they merged for a moment and drew apart again. The music spoke—spoke to Sheila intimately. It seemed to have for her a secret message. It communicated a tremulous half-sobbing ecstasy of pain and beauty: it drew her, shuddering with delight, through divers moods. Now she was in a moonlit forest of tall poplars, walking, walking, alone in the universe. Now there was a flowered field, full of white and green, yellow and red, made glad with the twinkling feet of dancing shepherds and shepherdesses.
As if in response to the music, stars began tremblingly to peer through the luminous green curtain of the sky.
The next morning Edward invited her into the holy of holies where the book was being written.
It was a small room having some of the austerity of a monk’s cell. Two of the walls were lined with books, classified under such headings as Ancient History, Mediæval History, Modern History, Sociology, Science, Philosophy.