Cheered by his prophecies, he drew the table as near to the open window as the spattering raindrops permitted and resolutely took up his pen. For the first half-hour his gaze was more often on the door of the neighboring house than on his task. But after that the work—a paper on “Early Colonial Architecture in the South” to be read at a meeting of the Society of Architects—progressed finely, while the rain beat ceaselessly upon trees and shrubs and pat, pattered on the window-sill at his elbow.
By bedtime he had written the final word. After he had blown out his lamp he went to the window overlooking the Enchanted Garden. The back of the Castle was in darkness, but the rain had ceased, the dripping roses were scenting the night with their perfume and, high overhead, the moon peeped wanly through a rift in the clouds.
[VII]
“They are looking well after the rain,” he suggested interrogatively. She had shown no disposition to avoid him, in fact, her rather distant inclination of the head had preceded his own bow by a flattering fraction of a second.
“Yes,” she agreed, without, however, pausing in her task of filling her basket with great long-stemmed blooms. Burton left the table and leaned over the fence.
“On a day like yesterday one rather wishes oneself a rose-bush or tree or something equally inanimate, don’t you think?”