His tone was grave and thoughtful, and his speech hardly sounded like a compliment. There was no air of gallantry to alarm her.
He took the shabby little volume from her hand, and turned the pages slowly, pausing to read a few lines, here and there.
"'Part the first, Thanatos, Part the second, Eros.' From darkness to light," he said, in the deep, grave voice which was her most distinctive impression of Mario Provana. "He believed in the victory of spirit over flesh. He was a poet; and faith is easy where the imagination is strong. Tennyson knew that all religion, all peace of mind, hung upon that one vital question—the Afterwards—the other world that is to give us back lost love, lost youth, lost genius, lost joy. I am not a religious man, Vera; indeed, to the Church of Rome I count as an infidel, because I cannot subject my mind to the outward forms and conventions which seem to me no more than the dry husks of spiritual things. But I am more of a Pantheist than an infidel—my gospel is the gospel of Christ—my faith is the faith of Spinoza."
And then, after a silence, he said:
"I called you Vera just now. Do you mind? My daughter loved you as if you had been her sister. May I call you by your pretty Christian name?"
"Pray do. I'm sure Grannie won't mind," Vera answered naïvely.
"We will ask Grannie's permission," he said, with a grave smile. "If you will allow me to walk back to the 'Anglais' with you, I will call on Lady Felicia this afternoon, and we can get that small matter settled."
He talked to her as if she had been a child; and the difference between his forty years and her seventeen made the fatherly tone seem natural.
He walked slowly round the tomb, lingering beside it now and then, and leaning his hand on the marble slab while he stood with bent head looking at the inscription, in a pause that seemed long; and then he rejoined Vera, and they left the cemetery together.
"You are not out yet, I think," he said, when they had walked a little way. "I read a paragraph in a London paper to the effect that Lady Felicia Cunningham's granddaughter, Miss Veronica Davis, the daughter of the poet whose early death had been a loss to literature, was to be presented next season."