“I am Westbury?”
“Yes!” he answered, “yes!”
“Have you always thought that, Henry?”
“I believe so, yes.”
But beneath his clear, smiling gaze, the witch lights gleamed in her eyes, “I wonder if you will always think so, Henry!” But his words seemed to have made her inattentive, restless, so that it was at length almost abruptly that she rose. She turned an instant toward the picture framed by the window.
“How you love this town, Henry!”
“It is my piece of God’s world,” he answered with that simple reverence that could startle, then he stopped before turning away from the table, “May I?” he asked permission, as he picked up a sprig of holly. “We’ve had none at the house, and you remember how Annie loved holly.”
“Yes,” Lucy answered, “I remember—Annie’s holly.”
The Bishop still kept the spray of crimson berries in his hand when they had crossed the hall into the library, where the fire sprang high and where beyond the twin windows that matched those of the dining-room, the river had turned to slaty gray below the dulling eastern sky. The light in the room was quite clear, but yet the Bishop, in the dizziness that followed his rising and walking from the dining-room, groped for a chair, and sank into it awkwardly, leaning back a moment with shut eyes. For the instant his clear old face looked withered, and his hands upon the chair-arms hung lax.
Lucy was still standing against the fire glow, slight, vivid, imperious.