“He left you,” laughed Hal.
“The work of an idle moment.”
“Aren’t they the best? But I rather like that about your father, the fact that he was a spectator rather than a spouter. So many darned people aren’t content with their limitations. They have to puddle about with paint and ink.”
“As I do.”
“It’s yours by right, I suppose. At least, you really like it.”
“I have invented a litany, Hal. Will you listen to it? I invented it for the saddest people in the world. It goes like this: O God, be merciful to those who are free and must live with the fettered; to the scornful laughers who are bound to the humourless; to the swift who walk by the slow; and the idle who are bondsmen to the busy—and especially, O God, be merciful to all those whose spirits were young and whose generation denied them youth’s chance, amen. There must have been many like Daddy in his day.”
Through the trees the half moon glowed like the polished end of a woman’s nail against a pink and sapphire West. It was an infinitely tender moment, the end of a week of betrothal, the eve of his departure for a trip North.
“Let me, please, once more,” whispered Moira, “one I love.” And she quoted:
“La lune blanche
Luit dans les bois,