Part 57 (2/2)

”No.”

He laid it down, and she noticed the tangle of veins on his hand.

”The dandy in literature doesn't appeal to me. I must say many of these poets strike me as decadent fellows, not helped to anything like real manliness by their gifts.”

She sat down on the sofa, just where she had sat to have those long talks with Craven about Waring and Italy, the sea people, the colours of the sails on those s.h.i.+ps which look magical in sunsets, which move on as if bearing argosies from gorgeous hidden lands of the East.

”But never mind Baudelaire,” he continued, and his eyes, heavily lidded and shrouded by those big bushy eyebrows which seem to sprout almost with ardent violence as the body grows old, looked at her with melting kindness. ”What have you been doing, my dear? The old dog wants to know.

There is something on your mind, isn't there?”

Lady Sellingworth had once said to Sir Seymour that he reminded her of a big dog, and he had laughed and said that he was a big dog belonging to her. Since that day, when he wrote to her, he had often signed himself ”the old dog.” And often she had thought of him almost as one thinks of a devoted dog, absolutely trustworthy, ready for instant attack on your enemies, faithful with unquestioning faithfulness through anything.

As he spoke he gently took her hand, and she thought, ”If Alick Craven were taking my hand!”

The touch of his skin was warm and very dry. It gave her a woman's thoughts, not to be told of.

”What is it?” he asked.

Very gently she released her hand, and as she did so she looked on it almost sternly.

”Why?” she said. ”Do I look unhappy--or what? Sit down, Seymour dear.”

She seemed to add the last word with a sort of pressure, with almost self-conscious intention.

He drew the tails of his braided morning coat forward with both hands and sat down, and she thought, ”How differently a young man sits down!”

”Unhappy!” he said, in his quiet and strong, rather deep voice.

He looked at her with the scrutinizing eyes of affection, whose gaze sometimes is so difficult to bear. And she felt that something within her was writhing under his eyes.

”I don't think you often look happy, Adela. No; it isn't that. But you look to-day as if you had been going through something which had tried your nerves--some crisis.”

He paused. She remained silent and looked at his hands and then at his eyelids and eyebrows. And there was a terrible coldness in her scrutiny, which she did not show to him, but of which she was painfully aware.

His nails were not flat, but were noticeably curved. For a moment the thought in her mind was simply, ”Could I live with those nails?”

She hated herself for that thought; she despised herself for it; she considered herself almost inhuman and certainly despicable, and she recalled swiftly what Seymour was, the essential beauty and fineness of his character, his truth, his touching faithfulness. And almost simultaneously she thought, ”Why do old men get those terribly bushy eyebrows, like thickets?”

”Perhaps I think too much,” she said. ”Living alone, one thinks--and thinks. You have so much to do and I so little.”

”Sometimes I think of retiring,” he said.

”From the court?”

”Yes.”

”Oh, but they would never let you!”

”My place could be filled easily enough.”

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