Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/301



O step from the house into the garden was like passing from a vault into some strange, fierce resurrection. The great sun flaming in the midday sky was like the sound of trumpets. Aromatic odours exhaled in ardour through the quivering air. So hot, so bright, so clamorous was the outer world that Graham for a moment paused and looked about him in a sort of stupor.

Then, at the further end, he saw Marthe Ludérac sitting on the bench against the garden wall. She was waiting for him, and he remembered that autumn day when he had first seen the garden. This was the presence, this the consummation, for which it had waited. She rose as he approached her and stood there to receive him.

Cold and white she stood, under the hot sunlight; remote; repudiating. Ah, but how unavailingly she fixed those haughty, unappealing eyes upon him. Her eyes, her hands might repulse him and oceans might flow between them; and years; but they were for all time intimate. They knew each other. Under the blue window with the moonlit air blowing in upon them she had been as close as a consenting lover. He remembered how close; and so did she; he remembered