“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Teresa coldly.
They walked on in silence for a few minutes.
As through the land at eve we went
And plucked the ripened ears,
My wife and I....
“My wife and I ... fell out ... how does it go?”
“Not like that, Guy,” said Teresa, with a short laugh.
Guy blushed to the roots of his yellow hair; he had a secret handicap of which he was horribly ashamed—practically no ear for rhythm; and it was partly the lameness of his verses that had made him fall back on a poetry that had neither rhyme nor rhythm.
When he was absent from Teresa—even during a few hours—his idea of her would undergo a swift change; though remaining aloof, she would turn into a wonderfully sympathetic lady—remote, but not inaccessible; a lady eminently suited to moving gracefully among the Chippendale, coloured prints, and Queen Anne lacquer of his dining-room in St. James’s Street; quite at home, also, among the art nègre and modern French pictures of his drawing-room; receiving his mots with a whimsically affectionate smile; in society bringing out all that was most brilliant in him—existing, in short, merely for his own greater glory.