"After all, if it were left to me, I had rather be merciful to these soft little buds and sprays, and let the sun and the showers take charge. A whole cluster of blossoms left free to grow as Fate fashions them!—Why not? It is certainly very officious of me to strip a stem of its hopes just for the sake of one pampered blossom. . . . Non-interference is a safe creed, isn't it?"
But she continued moving along among the bushes, pinching back here, snipping, trimming, clipping there; and after a while she had wandered quite beyond speaking distance; and, at leisurely intervals she straightened up and turned to look back across the roses at him—quiet, unsmiling gaze in exchange for his unchanging eyes, which never left her.
She was at the farther edge of the rose garden now where a boy knelt, weeding; and Selwyn saw her speak to him and give him her basket and shears; and saw the boy start away toward the house, leaving her leaning idly above the sun-dial, elbows on the weather-beaten stone, studying the carved figures of the dial. And every line and contour and curve of her figure—even the lowered head, now resting between both hands—summoned him.
She heard his step, but did not move; and when he leaned above the dial, resting on his elbows, beside her, she laid her finger on the shadow of the dial.
"Time," she said, "is trying to frighten me. It pretends to be nearly five o'clock; do you believe it?"
"Time is running very fast with me," he said.
"With me, too; I don't wish it to; I don't care for third speed forward all the time."
He was bending closer above the stone dial, striving to decipher the inscription on it:
"Under blue skies
My shadow lies.
Under gray skies
My shadow dies.
"If over me
Two Lovers leaning
Would solve my Mystery
And read my Meaning,
—Or clear, or overcast the Skies—
The Answer always lies within their Eyes.
Look long! Look long! For there, and there alone
Time solves the Riddle graven on this Stone!"
Elbows almost touching they leaned at ease, idly reading the almost obliterated lines engraved there.