Chapter 4 - Page 2

made this pronouncement, she entered the ivory tower of
her deafness and closed the door. Denis could not induce her to
say anything more, could not induce her even to listen. She just
smiled at him, smiled and occasionally nodded.

Denis went out on to the terrace to smoke his after-breakfast
pipe and to read his morning paper. An hour later, when Anne
came down, she found him still reading. By this time he had got
to the Court Circular and the Forthcoming Weddings. He got up to
meet her as she approached, a Hamadryad in white muslin, across
the grass.

"Why, Denis," she exclaimed, "you look perfectly sweet in your
white trousers."

Denis was dreadfully taken aback. There was no possible retort.
"You speak as though I were a child in a new frock," he said,
with a show of irritation.

"But that's how I feel about you, Denis dear."

"Then you oughtn't to."

"But I can't help it. I'm so much older than you."

"I like that," he said. "Four years older."

"And if you do look perfectly sweet in your white trousers, why
shouldn't I say so? And why did you put them on, if you didn't
think you were going to look sweet in them?"

"Let's go into the garden," said Denis. He was put out; the
conversation had taken such a preposterous and unexpected turn.
He had planned a very different opening, in which he was to lead
off with, "You look adorable this morning," or something of the
kind, and she was to answer, "Do I?" and then there was to be a
pregnant silence. And now she had got in first with the
trousers. It was provoking; his pride was hurt.

That part of the garden that sloped down from the foot of the
terrace to the pool had a beauty which did not depend on colour
so much as on forms. It was as beautiful by moonlight as in the
sun. The silver of water, the dark shapes of yew and ilex trees
remained, at all hours and seasons, the dominant features of the
scene. It was a landscape in black and white. For colour there
was the flower-garden; it lay to one side of the pool, separated
from it by a huge Babylonian wall of yews. You passed through a
tunnel in the hedge, you opened a wicket in a wall, and you found
yourself, startlingly and suddenly, in the world of colour. The
July borders blazed and flared under the sun. Within its high
brick walls the garden was like a great tank of warmth and
perfume and colour.

Denis held open the little iron gate for his companion. "It's
like passing from a cloister into an Oriental palace," he said,
and took a deep breath of the warm, flower-scented air. "'In
fragrant volleys they let fly...' How does it go?

"'Well shot, ye firemen! Oh how sweet
And round your equal fires do meet;
Whose