“It has—left a void,” she said, her eyes still downcast, her voice just low enough, “—for me.”
The major pounced upon them at this juncture, feelingly accusing John of the nefarious design of robbing the assemblage of its bright and particular star. When Katharine put her hand in her cavalier’s arm, her eyes were dewy under their long shading lashes and her fine lips ever so little tremulous. It had been her best available moment, and she had used it.
As she moved away, her faint color slightly heightened, she was glad of the interruption. It was better as it was. When John Valiant came to her again....
But to him, as he stood watching her move lightly from him, there was vouchsafed illumination. It came to him suddenly that that placidity and hauteur which he had so admired in the old days were no mask for fires within. The exquisite husk was the real Katharine. Hers was the loveliness of some tall white lily cut in marble, splendid but chill. And with the thought, between him and her there swept through the shimmering candle-lighted air a breath of wet rose-fragrance like an impalpable cloud, and set in the midst of it a misty star-tinted gown sprayed with lilies-of-the-valley, and above it a girl’s face clear and vivid, her deep shadow-blue eyes fixed on his.
The music of a two-step was languishing when, a little later, Valiant and Shirley strolled down between the garden box-hedges, cypress-shaped and lifting spire-like toward a sky which bent, a silent canopy of mauve and purplish blue. The moon drowsed between the trees like a great yellow moth, and the shadows of the branches lay on the ground like sharp bluish etchings on light green paper. Behind them Damory Court lay a nest of woven music and laughter. The long white-muslined porch shimmered goldenly, and beside it under the lanterns dallied a flirtatious couple or two, ghost-like in the shadows.
Peace brooded over all, a vast sweet silence creeping through the trees—only here and there the twitter of a waking bird—and around them was the glimmer of tall flowers standing like pensive moon-worshipers in an ecstasy of prayerless bloom.
“Come,” he said. “Let me take you to see the sun-dial now.”
The tangle had been cut away and a narrow gravel-path led through the pruned creepers. She made an exclamation of delight. The onyx-pillar stood in an oasis of white—moonflowers, white dahlias, mignonette and narcissus; bars of late lilies-of-the-valley beyond these, bordered with Arum-lilies, white clematis, iris and bridal-wreath, shading out into tender paler hues that ringed the spotless purity like dawning passion.