“She’s sad still,” Lindsay dropped in absent comment.
“Yes,” Mrs. Spash agreed.
“I wonder what she wants?” Lindsay addressed this to himself. His voice was so low that perhaps Mrs. Spash did not hear it. At any rate she made no answer.
Another silence came.
Mrs. Spash finished her dusting. But she lingered. Lindsay still sat at the table; but his eyes had left the little villages arranged there. They went through the door and gazed out into the brilliant patch of sunlight on the grass. There spread under his eyes a narrow stretch of lawn, all sun-touched velvet; beyond a big crescent of garden. Low-growing zinnias in futuristic colors, high phlox in pastel colors; higher, Canterbury bells, deep blue; highest of all, hollyhocks, wine red. Beyond stretched further expanses of lawn. One tall, wide wine-glass elm spread a perfect circle of emerald shade. One low, thick copper-beech dropped an irregular splotch of luminous shadow. Beyond all this ran the gray, lichened stone wall. And beyond the stone wall came unredeemed jungle. Mrs. Spash began, all over again, to dust and to arrange the scanty furniture. After a while she spoke.
“Mr. Lindsay—”
Lindsay started abruptly.
“Mr. Lindsay—that time you fainted when you first saw me, setting out there on the door-stone, you remember—?”
Lindsay nodded.