'Would you like her better if she were your own?' he said quite gently, though with a keen eye directed at Wych Hazel's face.
'No. Not now.' The 'now' slipped out by mistake, and might mean either of two things. Rollo did not feel sure what it meant.
'Did you ever notice,' he said after a few minutes again, 'how different the clouds of this season are from those of other times of the year? Look at those high bands of vapour lying along towards the south; they seem absolutely poised and still. Clouds in spring and summer are drifting, or flying, or dispersing, or gathering: earnest and purposeful; with work to do, and hurrying to do it. Look at those yonder; they are at rest, as if all the work of the year were done up. I think they say it is.'
The fair grave face was lifted, shewing uncertainty through the light veil; and she looked up intently at the sky, almost wondering to herself if there had been clouds in the spring and early summer. She hardly seemed to remember them.
'Is that what they say to you?' she said dreamily. 'They look to me as if they were just waiting,—waiting to see where the wind will rise.'
'But the wind does not rise in October. They will lie there, on the blessed blue, half the day. It looks to me like the rest after work.'
She glanced at him.
'I do not know much about work,' she said. 'What I suppose you would call work. It has not come into my hands.'
'It has not come into mine,' said Rollo. 'But can there be rest without work going before it?'
'Such stillness?' she said, looking up at the white flecks again. 'But according to that, we do not either of us know rest.'