At any rate, the spell was broken. Hugging his parcel dangerously close he raced back to the shelter of the trees and waited. High over head the house opened a bright eye at him. He waved back at it with an absurd, incredible boyishness.
Then he walked on deliberately, firmly.
What was it he had to set his mind on?
Of course. That question of therapeutics——
II
1
"I don't understand it," Christine said. "It seems to me better than anything you've ever read to me."
She counted her stitches for the second time, and looked up at the sun that showed its face over the stable roof opposite, as though at a lamp which did not burn as well as it used to do. In the dusty golden light she was like a figure in a tapestry. Perhaps in its early days it had been a trifle crude, a trifle harsh in colour, but now worn and threadbare, trembling on decay, it had attained a rare and exquisite beauty.
She smiled back blindly into the little room.
"Don't you think so, Robert?"