Mona laughed. "In other words, don't let us take stock of our conclusions, Ralph," she said, "for that is intellectual death."
CHAPTER LXII.
IN ARCADIA.
It was a December afternoon. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky on the olive-woods of Bordighera, and Ralph lay stretched on a mossy terrace, looking up at the foliage overhead. It filled him with keen delight, that wonderful green canopy, shading here, as it did, into softest grey, glowing there into gold, or sparkling into diamonds. The air was soft and fragrant, and, away beyond the little town, he felt, though he could not see, the blue stretch of the Mediterranean. It seemed to him as though the stormy river of his life had merged into an ocean of infinite content. For the moment, ambition and struggle were dead within him, and he looked neither behind nor before.
The crackling of a dry twig made him turn round.
"Come along, sweetheart," he said; "I have been lazily listening for your step for the last half-hour."
"Then you began to listen far too soon," she said, seating herself beside him, and putting her hand in his. "But I am a few minutes late. The post came in just as I was starting."
"No letters, I hope?"
"Two for me—from Doris and Auntie Bell. I suppose you don't care to read them?"
He shook his head. "Not if you will boil them down for me."