[18] Lion Heart.
CHAPTER VIII.
STICK TO THE FRONTIER.
"We know our motives least in their confused beginning."
—Browning.
Honor sat alone in the drawing-room, a basket of socks and stockings at her elbow, her thoughts working as busily as her needle. This girl had reduced the prosaic necessity of darning to a fine art; and since Evelyn's efforts in that direction bore an odd resemblance to ill-constructed lattice windows, Honor had taken pity on the maltreated garments very early in the day.
Evelyn herself was at the tennis-courts, with the Kresneys and Harry Denvil, a state of things that had become increasingly frequent of late; and a ceaseless murmur of two deep voices came to Honor's ears through the open door of the study, where Desmond was talking and reading Persian with his friend Rajinder Singh.
Honor enjoyed working to the accompaniment of that sound. It had grown pleasantly familiar during the past week, in which Desmond had been cut off from outdoor activities. When the Persian lesson was over, he would come in to her for a talk. Then there would be music, and possibly a game of chess; for Desmond was an enthusiastic player. They had spent one or two afternoons in this fashion already, since the night of the fire; and their intimacy bid fair to ripen into a very satisfying friendship.
To the end of time, writers and thinkers will continue to insist upon the impossibility of such friendships; and to the end of time, men and women will persist in playing with this form of fire. For it is precisely the possibility of fire under the surface which lends its peculiar fascination to an experiment old as the Pyramids, yet eternally fresh as the first leaf-bud of spring.