Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon.”
Anne let the book slip into her lap. “Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses,” she repeated softly.
It was of these “imperishable things” she was thinking, the things of the spirit, that persist when as with her the desire of the flesh is dead, and the lust of the eyes. The imperishable things that last into the evening of life, when the stars come out, and ever nearer and nearer draw the “murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.”
XXIII
It was two years before François Fontenelle re-visited Fairholme Court. Again it was June, and Anne had taken him to the garden, full of pride to show him her roses in the height of their beauty.
They strolled round its paths talking of a thousand things, and finally sat down under the arch, over which there poured a cascade of snowy bloom. The table in front of the bench was littered with papers, which François began idly to examine.
“The New Thought!” he exclaimed, holding up one of the leaflets between his finger and thumb. “What on earth are you doing with this latter day product?”
Anne laughed. “A strenuous young thing who is spending her holiday in the village brought a heap of papers this morning, and begged me to read them. She said it was scandalous that such an intelligent woman as I appeared to her, should be ignorant of the ‘movement,’” she added demurely.
“Whatever the modern young woman lacks, it isn’t cheek,” he returned.
“Well! What do you think of the ‘no property’ idea in the eternally boring sex question? Let me see, there are to be state babies, aren’t there? Have state lovers been suggested yet, or is that a figment of my imagination?”