Some hundred yards or so they walked in silence, two, at least, of the party casting occasional furtive glances to the right. John was the first to speak.
“This,” he said, with the air of a man who has just made a discovery, “is really beautiful country.”
“It is your first visit to this neighbourhood?” queried Rosamund.
“My first,” returned John, “but I dare swear it will not be my last. My friend, Corin Elmore, dragged me down here, somewhat against my will at the outset, I’ll allow. He’s uncovering the mural paintings in the church down yonder.”
“Ah!” Rosamund turned towards him, a light of interest in her eyes. “Has he found much?”
“He only started on the job this morning,” returned John. “We arrived last night. But he’s full of confidence. There must be a curious fascination in the work,—delving into the past, bringing traces of bygone, forgotten ages into the light of day.”
“And a certain sadness,” she suggested.
“And a certain sadness,” echoed John, “though I doubt me if Corin experiences it greatly. He’s an anomaly. For all that he’s a poet and a bit of a dreamer, there’s a strain of the scientific dissector running through him. It finds its outlet in theosophic tendencies.” John pulled a wry face.
He had forgotten that he was talking to an absolute stranger. Yet was she a stranger in the true sense of the word? One afternoon—six months ago as we crudely count and label time, though to John it was centuries ago—he had had sight of her, a mere passing glimpse, truly, since it was of length only sufficient to allow of her mounting the steps of the Brompton Oratory, at a moment when John was about to descend them. He had put a question to a friend who was with him. And thenceforth John’s dreams had been coloured—I might almost say suffused—by one subject, a face with dark eyes, framed in copper-coloured hair, and shadowed by a largish black hat. Being, therefore, no stranger to his dreams in spirit, it was small wonder that he regarded her as no stranger to his perceptions in the flesh.
Rosamund looked at him, half amused, half questioning.