Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/21

 beginning to wish that she would move on. This wonderful French light enveloped the landscape like an incantation; but it was October; the days were getting short; it would change if they went on talking too long.

'You are staying at our little Buissac, Monsieur?' asked the old lady. She must guess that he wanted to go on painting; but she could not, yet, he felt, bring herself to leave him.

'Only for a week. We are on our way South.'

'You are not alone?'

'My wife is with me.'

'She, also, is an artist?'

'Far from it.' Graham smiled a little, streaking a tentative colour on his palette.

'She has other occupations while you paint?'

'She's fond of motoring. She's probably scouring the country at this moment.' Graham laid on his colour.

'It is a wild, a desolate country for a young woman to venture far afield in. You do not fear for her?'

'Fear for Jill!' Graham laughed. 'She went through the war, too. She drove an ambulance in the firing line most of the time. The Dordogne isn't likely to frighten her after that.' He looked up at the old lady—'May I bring her to see you one day before we go? I should like to go on talking;—but not now.'

The old lady seemed for a moment arrested by this suggestion, and her young man's casual, kindly tone showed her that, if not unaware of convention, he was at all events entirely indifferent to it. But her surprise