Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/19

 coat and trousers of thin grey homespun; a white silk shirt; blue socks; blue silk handkerchief, and sleeve-links of flat gold;—on all of which details the old lady's eyes rested, successively and with an almost passionate attention. His demeanour was that of an artist, but his dress that of a man of fashion.

'To analyse a menace is difficult, is it not?' she said, as he cast his dark glance again upon her. 'Your sky is blue; it is full of sunlight; yet it is a tragic sky.'

'I always feel the sky in France rather tragic,' said Graham. 'It seems to relegate us; to have no use for us; none of the complicity that one feels in our caressing English skies.'

'Ah; I thought you English—though your French is so excellent.—An English artist who prefers to paint France rather than his own country. Bien, '  the old lady smiled. Her smile drew her drooping lid still lower; and her front teeth, still beautiful, though set in cavernous darkness, lent it a certain pathos. 'Perhaps that is what I felt in your picture. It relegates us. And not only its sky. Your very river is merciless.—Though indeed one does not expect mercy from a great river such as our Dordogne.'

'It's marvellous,' said Graham, gazing again before him. It was. He never recovered from the shock of splendour each seeing of it brought. Winding in majesty between its vast grey cliffs, its wooded gorges, it was to the earth what an eagle is to the sky; a presence; a power; possessing what encompasses it.

The old lady recalled his gaze. 'And it can be mer-