His voice was trembling.
"Yes," Deirdre said slowly. "She's beautiful like she used to be, though her hair's got grey in it ... and the colour of the pink orchids has gone out of her skin. And she looks at you that way—I know what you mean—as if she were seeing ... not only the outside you.... It's her eyes ... and the way her lips lie together tell you about her real self and make you love her—even when you don't want to!"
The Schoolmaster threw himself back in his chair.
Deirdre gazed at him, then she turned away with a little sigh.
His face was almost a mirror to her now that he was blind. She could see his thoughts in it. It was sacred to her, that thin, lined face, all its reverence and emotion; but she could not bear to look at it and feel that she was stealing his secrets when his eyes could not guard them from her.
She went to the seat under the window and sat there thinking, idly, aimlessly, for awhile. Recollections of Mrs. Cameron were always those of a woman occupied with her home, her husband and son. Deirdre wondered how her father came to be in Mrs. Cameron's debt, as he had said he was, how it was he owed her anything at all. She seemed to owe him so much.
The cows had gathered up to the fence near the bails for the milking. They were lowing quietly, the sunshine making a luminous mist behind them; the birds were laughing and hooting among the trees.
Deirdre rose to go and do the milking, but Steve burst open the door from the tap-room.
A moment before there had been a clatter of hoofs on the shingle. Steve stood on the threshold, the muscles of his face twitching.
"It's Pete M'Coll from the Wirree," he gasped. "He says—they've got Davey at Port Phillip for duffing!"