Part 18 (1/2)

She continued to look thoughtful for a moment longer, then with a resumption of her former manner--the pretence of an earnestness much deeper than the real--”Will you take me painting with you?” she said.

”If it will convince you that I mean it, I'll give up my hopes of seeing that SUMPTUOUS Mr. Saffren and go back to Quesnay now, before he comes home. He's been out for a walk--a long one, since it's lasted ever since early this morning, so the waiter told me. May I go with you? You CAN'T know how enervating it is up there at the chateau--all except Mrs. Harman, and even she--”

”What about Mrs. Harman?” I asked, as she paused.

”I think she must be in love.”

”What!”

”I do think so,” said the girl. ”She's LIKE it, at least.”

”But with whom?”

She laughed gaily. ”I'm afraid she's my rival!”

”Not with--” I began.

”Yes, with your beautiful and mad young friend.”

”But--oh, it's preposterous!” I cried, profoundly disturbed. ”She couldn't be! If you knew a great deal about her--”

”I may know more than you think. My simplicity of appearance is deceptive,” she mocked, beginning to set her sketch-box in order. ”You don't realise that Mrs. Harman and I are quite HURLED upon each other at Quesnay, being two ravis.h.i.+ngly intelligent women entirely surrounded by large bodies of elementals. She has told me a great deal of herself since that first evening, and I know--well, I know why she did not come back from Dives this afternoon, for instance.”

”WHY?” I fairly shouted.

She slid her sketch into a groove in the box, which she closed, and rose to her feet before answering. Then she set her hat a little straighter with a touch, looking so fixedly and with such grave interest over my shoulder that I turned to follow her glance and encountered our reflections in a window of the inn. Her own shed a light upon THAT mystery, at all events.

”I might tell you some day,” she said indifferently, ”if I gained enough confidence in you through a.s.sociation in daily pursuits.”

”My dear young lady,” I cried with real exasperation, ”I am a working man, and this is a working summer for me!”

”Do you think I'd spoil it?” she urged gently.

”But I get up with the first daylight to paint,” I protested, ”and I paint all day--”

She moved a step nearer me and laid her hand warningly upon my sleeve, checking the outburst.

I turned to see what she meant.

Oliver Saffren had come in from the road and was crossing to the gallery steps. He lifted his hat and gave me a quick word of greeting as he pa.s.sed, and at the sight of his flushed and happy face my riddle was solved for me. Amazing as the thing was, I had no doubt of the revelation.

”Ah,” I said to Miss Elliott when he had gone, ”I won't have to take pupils to get the answer to my question, now!”

CHAPTER XIV

”Ha, these philosophers,” said the professor, expanding in discourse a little later--”these dreamy people who talk of the spirit, they tell you that spirit is abstract!” He waved his great hand in a sweeping semicircle which carried it out of our orange candle-light and freckled it with the cold moons.h.i.+ne which sieved through the loosened screen of honeysuckle. ”Ha, the folly!”

”What do YOU say it is?” I asked, moving so that the smoke of my cigar should not drift toward Oliver, who sat looking out into the garden.

”I, my friend? I do not say that it IS! But all such things, they are only a question of names, and when I use the word 'spirit' I mean ident.i.ty--universal ident.i.ty, if you like. It is what we all are, yes--and those flowers, too. But the spirit of the flowers is not what you smell, nor what you see, that look so pretty: it is the flowers themself! Yet all spirit is only one spirit and one spirit is all spirit--and if you tell me this is Pant'eism I will tell you that you do not understand!”