“How does it please you?”
“Oh, I like it! It is just the cottage one dreams about when one is in a London suburb. And that rock garden! The colours are as soft and as gorgeous as the colours on a Persian dish.”
Canterton had the key with him. They walked up the path that was paved with irregular blocks of stone. Eve’s eyes saw the date on the porch. She understood in a flash why he had not told her for whom he had built it.
Canterton unlocked the door. A silence fell upon her, and her eyes became more shadowy and serious as she went from room to room and saw all the exquisite but simple details, all the thought that had been put into this cottage. Everything was as she would have imagined it for herself. She touched the oak panelling with the tips of her fingers and smiled.
“It is just perfect!”
He took her to one of the windows.
“The vision is not cramped?”
“No.”
She looked away over the evening landscape, and the broad valley was bathed in gold. It was very beautiful, very still. Eve could hear the sound of her own breathing. And for the moment she could not look at Canterton, could not speak to him. She guessed what was in his mind, and knew what was in her own.
“A place to dream in!”