"Put your black head, darling, darling, darling.
Your darling black head my heart above.
O mouth of honey, with thyme for fragrance.
Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?"
Deirdre, pressing to him, tasted the satisfaction that all young creatures have in being close to those they love. His arms were warm and tender. An invasion of peace drove the sorrowful ache from her heart.
"My own mother," she asked suddenly. "Was she like Mrs. Cameron?"
"No."
There was the mingling of grief and troubled thinking in his face that she had always seen there when he spoke of her mother.
"She had a little brown bird, an English bird that sang in a cage," he said. "She was like that; but she never sang herself. She was one of those people life has broken, Deirdre."
"You married her ... and looked after her, Dan!"
His head dropped; he avoided her eyes.
"Then you came ... and she died," he said.
"Such a sorrowful mite you were!" he went on. "Such a lonely baby, wailing night and day, that there was only one name to give you, Deirdre—Deirdre of the griefs."