Mrs. Graves went off early.
"You had better stop and smoke here," she said to Howard. "There's
a library where you can work and smoke to-morrow; and now good
night, and let me say how I delight to have you here--I really
can't say how much!"
Howard sat alone in the drawing-room. He had an almost painful
faculty of minute observation, and the storage of new impressions
was a real strain to him. To-day it seemed that they had poured in
upon him in a cataract, and he felt dangerously wakeful; why had he
been such a fool as to have missed this beautiful house, and this
home atmosphere of affection? He could not say. A stupid
persistence in his own plans, he supposed. Yet this had been
waiting for him, a home such as he had never owned. He thought with
an almost terrified disgust of his rooms at Beaufort, as the logs
burned whisperingly in the grate, and the smoke of his cigarette
rose on the air. Was it not this that he had been needing all
along? At last he rose, put out the candles, and made his way to
the big panelled bedroom which had been given him. He lay long
awake, wondering, in a luxurious repose, listening to the whisper
of the breeze in the shrubberies, and the faint murmur of the water
in the full-fed stream.
IV
THE POOL
Very early in the morning Howard woke to hear the faint twittering
of the birds begin in bush and ivy. It was at first just a fitful,
drowsy chirp, a call "are you there? are you there?" until, when
all the sparrows were in full cry, a thrush struck boldly in, like
a solo marching out above a humming accompaniment of strings.
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