“Have you ever doubted it?” he asked.
The Great Dane, the Lord High Constable, who was stretched out on his side, with relaxed, enormous limbs, on the hearth-rug, lifted his massive head for a second and glanced at John. Then with a half-grunt, half-sigh, he dropped his head, and twitched his limbs and went to sleep again.
“Now and then when you 're not looking at me,” said Stellamaris, “there is a strange look in your eyes: it is when you 're not speaking and you stare out of window without seeming to see anything.”
For a moment Risca was assailed by a temptation to break the Unwritten Law and tell her something of his misery. She, with her superfine intelligence, would understand, and her sympathy would be sweet. But he put the temptation roughly from him.
“I am the happiest fellow in the world, Stellamaris,” said he.
“It would be difficult not to be happy in such a world.”
She pointed out to sea. The blustering wind of the day before had fallen, and a light breeze shook the tips of the waves to the morning sunshine, which turned them into diamonds. The sails of the fishing-fleet of the tiny port flashed merrily against the kindly blue. On the horizon a great steamer was visible steaming up Channel. The salt air came in through the open windows. The laughter of fishermen's children rose faintly from the beach far below.
“And there's spring, too, dancing over everything,” she said. “Don't you feel it?”
He acknowledged the vernal influence, and, careful lest his eyes should betray him, talked of the many things she loved. He had not seen her for a fortnight, so there were the apocryphal doings of Lilias and Niphetos to record,—Cleopatras of cats, whom age could not wither, and whose infinite variety custom could not stale,—and there was the approaching marriage of Arachne with a duke to report. And he told her of his gay, bright life in London and of the beautiful Belinda Molyneux, an imaginary Egeria, who sometimes lunched with the queen. The effort of artistic creation absorbed him, as it always had done, under the spell of Stellamaris's shining eyes. The foolish world of his imagination became real, and for the moment hung like a veil before his actual world of tragedy. It was in the nature of a shock to him when Stella's maid entered and asked him if he could speak to Mr. Herold outside the door..
“Tell him to come in,” said Stellamaris.