The doctor followed her through the house and across the lawn into one of the walled gardens. “How gorgeous!” he exclaimed, as she opened the gate.
The enclosure was a blaze of colour. Wine-red, white faintly flushed with pink, yellow soft as a sunset sky, the flowers stood close together in stately rows.
Behind them, on either side of the dividing grass path, masses of phlox, white and rose and crimson, continued the wave of colour till it was arrested by the enclosing walls.
“Look at the butterflies,” said the doctor, instinctively lowering his voice as though he feared to disturb them.
They hovered in numbers above the silken cups of the hollyhocks. On the sulphur-coloured petals of one of them, a Purple Emperor, motionless, extended his splendid wings. Here and there, dazzling in fairy armour of peacock-blue and sheen of silver, darted a dragon-fly.
“The colour of the thing is intoxicating,” murmured Dr. Dakin.
“It reminded me this morning of an elaborately arranged ‘sensation’ scheme, planned by that madman in À Rebours. Only of course, he would have despised such a homely natural flower as the hollyhock.”
The doctor smiled. “What a curious anomaly you are here, my dear lady!” he declared suddenly. “And yet that’s not true either, because you also suit the place to perfection. Huysmans, and a country practice, and Carfax—and you! It’s an amazing world. I hope some intelligent Being doesn’t miss the exquisite humour of many human juxtapositions,” he added rather drily.
“I’m glad Sylvia’s going to study,” was Miss Page’s somewhat irrelevant reply. “She has a beautiful voice.”
“Quite remarkable,” he agreed. “She’ll be a difficult young woman though, if that face of hers means anything. I don’t know that you haven’t thrown her to the lions.”