“That’s the cry! But isn’t it a rum thing, Miss Carfax, how nine people out of ten knock along as though there were nothing fit to make them jump out of their skins with curiosity. Why I was always like a terrier after a rat. ‘What’s this?’ ‘What’s that?’ That’s my leitmotiv. But most people don’t ask Nature any questions. No wonder she despises them, the dullards, just as though they hadn’t an eye to see that she’s a good-looking woman!”
He erected her easel for her in the rosery, tilted his Panama hat, and marched off.
Eve sought out Guinevere and sat herself down before the prospective saint, only to find that she was in no mood for painting. Her glance flitted from rose to rose, and the music of their names ran like a poem through her head. Moreover, the June air was full of their perfume, a heavy, somnolent perfume that lures one into dreaming.
Suddenly she found that he was standing in one of the black arches cut in the yew hedge. She knew that the blood went to her face, and she remembered telling herself that she would have to overcome these too obvious reactions.
He came and stood beside her, looking down at her with steady and eloquent eyes.
“You have found out Guinevere?”
“Yes. We are old friends now.”
“I am not going to market this rose. She is to be held sacred to Fernhill. How are you getting on at the cottage?”
Her eyes glimmered to his.
“Thank you for everything.”