“As if it could be otherwise,” Terrence censured. “But as I was saying, ’tis a bird-like sensuousness—oh, not the little, hoppy, wagtail kind, nor yet the sleek and solemn dove, but a merry sort of bird, like the wild canaries you see bathing in the fountains, always twittering and singing, flinging the water in the sun, and glowing the golden hearts of them on their happy breasts. ’Tis like that the Little Lady is. I have observed her much.
“Everything on the earth and under the earth and in the sky contributes to the passion of her days—the untoward purple of the ground myrtle when it has no right to aught more than pale lavender, a single red rose tossing in the bathing wind, one perfect Duchesse rose bursting from its bush into the sunshine, as she said to me, ’pink as the dawn, Terrence, and shaped like a kiss.’
“’Tis all one with her—the Princess’s silver neigh, the sheep bells of a frosty morn, the pretty Angora goats making silky pictures on the hillside all day long, the drifts of purple lupins along the fences, the long hot grass on slope and roadside, the summer-burnt hills tawny as crouching lions—and even have I seen the sheer sensuous pleasure of the Little Lady with bathing her arms and neck in the blessed sun.”
“She is the soul of beauty,” Leo murmured. “One understands how men can die for women such as she.”
“And how men can live for them, and love them, the lovely things,” Terrence added. “Listen, Mr. Graham, and I’ll tell you a secret. We philosophers of the madroño grove, we wrecks and wastages of life here in the quiet backwater and easement of Dick’s munificence, are a brotherhood of lovers. And the lady of our hearts is all the one—the Little Lady. We, who merely talk and dream our days away, and who would lift never a hand for God, or country, or the devil, are pledged knights of the Little Lady.”
“We would die for her,” Leo affirmed, slowly nodding his head.
“Nay, lad, we would live for her and fight for her, dying is that easy.”
Graham missed nothing of it. The boy did not understand, but in the blue eyes of the Celt, peering from under the mop of iron-gray hair, there was no mistaking the knowledge of the situation.
Voices of men were heard coming down the stairs, and, as Martinez and Dar Hyal entered, Terrence was saying:
“’Tis fine weather they say they’re having down at Catalina now, and I hear the tunny fish are biting splendid.”