Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/271

 with the shadow of an ashen smile, she said, 'It is all the substance I ask for.'

'You are my Undine, eh? I make or unmake you? Well; have it so, then. I can't make anything enduring out of someone I don't understand, you know.'

'Ah, but I do not wish to endure. When you pass from my life—as you soon must do—I know it well—my wish would be that my life, too, should pass, like the shadow when the sun has sunk.'

'I hope that's not true. I don't know when you speak the truth,' Graham muttered, for her voice moved him strangely. 'Let us go back to our theme. Remembrance and presage. Aren't there sweet things in remembrance, then?'

The old lady accepted the change of key. She looked away from him. She seemed to ponder, and, again with the ashen smile, she said, 'Yes; there are sweet things. I sometimes think for hours of my childhood. When one is old I imagine that one's childhood is always sweet to one. One lifts oneself up, up, on the tips of one's toes—and there, far away, over all the mists and morasses, it is just visible; so bright; so small; so long. Looking back it seems as Jong as all the rest that comes between.'

'Tell me about your childhood,' he said. And sitting there, wrapped in her long black shawl, obedient, acquiescent, blissful, weaving with skill and industry any spell that might keep him near her, she told him.

The small, bright kingdom with its long, long days rose up softly before him. The cathedral of a great