“Yes, ... I can hardly believe it myself,” and again he gave a little nervous laugh.
“Well, dear old thing,” and she laid a hand on his arm, “I’m your godmother, you know, and your mother and I ... I don’t believe we were ever away from each other till I married ... you’re sure ... it’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Aunt May, it’s going to be all right.... I’m sure,” and again he laughed; and although he was very pale, his eyes were bright and happy.
“Shall we go and walk down the border and look beautiful too?” said Guy to Teresa.
“Well, and what about the play?” he asked, when they were out of ear-shot.
“It’s finished at last ... so I can breathe again. While I was writing I felt rather like a sort of Thomas the Rhymer, a thrall to ghosts and fairies; and I got half to hate the whole thing, as one is always inclined to hate a master.”
She was trying to be friendly, and thought it would please him if she told him about such intimate things; but he was not pleased.
Though he had never written anything long enough to give him at first hand the feeling she had described, yet he realised it was what certainly would be felt by a genuine dramatist or novelist; and it was not in his picture that Teresa should be either—Sophocles may have led his own choruses, but he did not lead those of Euripides.
“The play’s finished, and yet all this,” and she waved her arm vaguely in the direction of the house and garden and all the groups of people, “and yet all this goes on just the same.”