Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/136

 Dick was looking at her tremulous, lighted face as though he, too, were seeing it with that deeper vision. 'You're a darling, Jill,' he said.

He had put out his hand to her and she took it, murmuring, 'She does upset me.'

'She upsets us both a little, perhaps, in different ways. Black magic with me, and white with you. No doubt she's a remarkable young woman; but it's you who are the darling. You lend her all the poetry that's in yourself.'

'Poetry! In me, Dick!' Jill had to laugh though his words had brought unaccustomed tears to her eyes.

'You've been an embodiment of poetry ever since you began to talk about her. Your state of mind is poetry.—You're a queer people, you English, Jill. Here you are, a hard-headed, matter-of-fact, unimaginative, hunting girl; yet, give you a chance, push aside the woodland stone, and it's the well of English poetry that bubbles up out of the moss. There's always askylark waiting to sing in your sky.—She may be the silent sky, Jill;—but you are the sky with the skylark in it.'

Jill gazed at him and she murmured, 'Great Scott, Dick!' He made her extraordinarily happy. And he made her sad, too. Was it like the great landscape that afternoon, with the sense it brought of the accepted tragedy in all beauty? No, not quite that. The moment, as she sat there, holding Dick's hand, meeting his loving gaze, was beautiful and not to be forgotten; but Dick was sad. There was something