"I will let you know at once."
"A telegram brings me here—this same spot. But you won't wire from the village?"
"Oh no, from Latchford."
"Well, then, that's settled. Regard me, please, as your henchman.
Well!—have you read any Madame de Noailles?"
He fancied he saw a slight impatient movement.
"Not yet, I'm afraid. I've been living in a sick room."
Again he expressed polite sympathy, while his thoughts repeated—"What waste!—what absurdity!"
"She might distract you—especially in these winter days. Her verse is the very quintessence of summer—of hot gardens and their scents—of roses—and June twilights. It takes one out of this leafless north." He stretched a hand to the landscape.
And suddenly, while his heavy face kindled, he began to recite. His French was immaculate—even to a sensitive and well-trained ear; and his voice, which in speaking was disagreeable, took in reciting deep and beautiful notes, which easily communicated to a listener the thrill, the passion, of sensuous pleasure, which certain poetry produced in himself.
But it communicated no such thrill to Delia. She was only irritably conscious of the uncouthness of his large cadaverous face, and straggling fair hair; of his ragged ulster, his loosened tie, and all the other untidy details of his dress. "And I shall have to go on meeting him!" she thought, with repulsion. "And at the end of this walk (the gate was in sight) I shall have to shake hands with him—and he'll hold my hand."