"Yes," he said, his mind going back to all their gay gatherings of wild flowers for Mrs. Cameron. It awed and surprised him that she should even then have discovered what his most secret heart was scarcely aware of.
"It was the little blue flowers, don't you remember, we put in for her eyes?" Deirdre went on, "Though you said that they weren't a bit like her eyes. 'Dew on the grass' is what some would call her eyes, but it is a poor colour, that—dew on the grass—no colour at all,' you said. 'Grass with the dew on it, or dew with a scrap of heaven, or the twilight shining in it, would have been better. That's what she has, Deirdre,' you used to say; 'eyes with the twilight in them—twilight eyes—you can see her thoughts gathering in them, brooding and dark, or glimmering like the light of the day, dying,' Do you remember saying all that to me? I do; because I've said it over to myself so often."
He understood the apprehensive, shy and shamed confession of her eyes.
"Do you mean," he asked, "that Deirdre thinks anybody could be to me what she is?"
Deirdre nodded, her contrite gaze melting into his.
"That one," his head turned in the direction of the hills, "is like the Mother of God to me. She was very good to me when I was a desperate man, long ago."
Deirdre gazed at him, her lips quivering.
"That's why you must always love her—Mrs. Cameron—my darling black head," he said.
"Sing it to me," Deirdre cried, thirsting for the tenderness of the old song.
He gathered her up in his arms and crooned in the Gaelic as he used to when she was a baby: