A morning of unclouded brilliance found Desmond frankly bored with tactics and topography; the more so, perhaps, because Paul with simple craft took his industry for granted.
Soon after eleven, he put aside the inevitable pipe and newspaper and took up his hat. "Well, Theo," said he, "you won't be needing me till after lunch I suppose?—I'm off."
"Where to, old man?" Desmond yawned extensively as he spoke, and pushed aside his little pile of red books with a promising gesture of distaste. "What's your dissipated programme?"
"An hour in the Diploma Gallery, and a stroll in the Park," Paul replied with admirable unconcern. "D'you feel like coming?"
"I feel like chucking all these into the waste-paper basket! When England takes it into her capricious head to do this sort of thing in May, how the devil can a human man keep his nose to the grindstone? Come on!"
Paul's heart beat fast as they stepped into the street; faster still as he glanced at Theo striding briskly beside him, head in air all unconscious that he was faring toward a tryst far more in tune with the season and the new life astir in his blood than his late abnormal zeal in pursuit of promotion.
To Paul it seemed that the heavens themselves were in league with him. Overhead, scattered ranks of chimneypots were bitten out of a sky scarcely less blue and ardent than Italy's own. In every open space young leaves flashed, golden-green, on soot-blackened branches of chestnut, plane, and lime. And there were flowers everywhere—in squares and window-boxes and parks; in florists' and milliners' windows; in the baskets of flower-sellers and in women's hats. The paper-boy—blackbird of the London streets—whistled a livelier stave. Girls hurried past smiling at nothing in particular. They were glad to be alive—that was all.
And Theo?
He too was glad to be alive, to be free, at last, from the conquering shadow of memory and self-reproach. If penance were required of him, surely that black year must suffice. Now the living claimed him; and that claim could no longer be ignored. With a heart too full for speech he walked beside his friend; and halting at last, on the steps of Burlington House, he bared his head to the sunlight and drew a deep breath of content.