“My cousin has gone away to-day. Did you know?” said Cicely, rather irrelevantly.
“Your cousin?” repeated Mr. Guildford. Oh! yes, of course. You mean Miss Casalis. Somehow when you spoke I thought you meant Mr. Fawcett.”
“Well he, as it happens, has gone away too,” said Cicely with a smile. “He is going further away than Geneviève; she has only gone to Ventnor, and Mr. Fawcett is bound for Norway.”
“So you are all alone?” remarked Mr. Guildford. “Does that add to the low spirits you were owning to the other day?”
“Not low spirits—crossness, corrected Cicely, laughing. “No, I don’t think it does. I think sometimes I grow nicer when I am alone.”
“At least, there is no one to dispute the soundness of the pleasing belief?” said Mr. Guildford. “But I think I know what you mean. A little solitude soothes and calms one wonderfully sometimes.”
He walked to the window and looked out. “One can hardly imagine the lines falling to one in a pleasanter place than this,” he observed, as his gaze rested on the beautiful old garden basking in the warmth and brightness of the midsummer afternoon.
“It is a home that one can love,” agreed Cicely. She had followed him to the open window. “Did you ever think to yourself when you would best like to die? I mean,” she added, seeing that her companion glanced up in surprise, “did you ever try to think at what hour and season death would seem least dreadful, least physically repulsive and unnatural, that is to say?”
“Did you?” he inquired. “I don’t think I have ever given it a thought. What does it matter?”
“It does not matter in the least,” she answered, “but still one often considers things that do not matter, as if they did. It was the beautiful, quiet afternoon that made me think of it. I have always thought that I should like to die on a summer afternoon—not evening, evening suggests night—just when the world seems a little tired, but not worn out, just gently exhausted. I should like the sun to be shining in the soft, warm way it is shining now, and the air to be clear. At night, in the darkness, one feels so far away from everywhere else.”