Before he reached her, Adeline was smiling again.  A smile of the delicate, instinctive mouth, of the blue eyes shining between curled lids, under dark eyebrows; of the innocent white nose; of the whole soft, milk-white face.  Even her sleek, dark hair smiled, shining.  She was conscious of her power to make him come to her, to make herself felt through everything, even through his bereavement.

The subtle Eliot, looking over the terrace wall, observed her and thought, “The mater’s jolly pleased with herself.  I wonder why.”

It struck Eliot also that a Commissioner of Ambala and a Member of the Legislative Council and a widower ought not to look like Mr. Severn.  He was too lively, too adventurous.

He turned again to the enthralling page.  “The student should lay open the theoracic cavity of the rabbit and dissect away the thymous gland and other tissues which hide the origin of the great vessels; so as to display the heart...”

Yearp, the vet, would show him how to do that.

iv

“His name’s Benjy.  He’s a butterfly smut,” said Jerrold.

The rabbit was quiet now.  He sat in Anne’s arms, couching, his forepaws laid on her breast.  She stooped and kissed his soft nose that went in and out, pushing against her mouth, in a delicate palpitation.  He was white, with black ears and a black oval at the root of his tail.  Two wing-shaped patches went up from his nose like a moustache.  That was his butterfly smut.

“He is sweet,” she said.

Colin said it after her in his shrill child’s voice:  “He is sweet.”  Colin had a habit of repeating what you said.  It was his way of joining in the conversation.

He stretched up his hand and stroked Benjy, and Anne felt the rabbit’s heart beat sharp and quick against her breast.  A shiver went through Benjy’s body.

Anne kissed him again.  Her heart swelled and shook with maternal tenderness.

“Why does he tremble so?”

“He’s frightened.  Don’t touch him, Col-Col.”

Colin couldn’t see an animal without wanting to stroke it.  He put his hands in his pockets to keep them out of temptation.  By the way Jerrold looked at him you saw how he loved him.

About Colin there was something beautiful and breakable.  Dusk-white face; little tidy nose and mouth; dark hair and eyes like the minnows swimming under the green water.  But Jerrold’s face was strong; and he had funny eyes that made you keep looking at him.  They were blue.  Not tiresomely blue, blue all the time, like his mother’s, but secretly and surprisingly blue, a blue that flashed at you and hid again, moving queerly in the set squareness of his face, presenting at every turn a different Jerrold.  He had a pleasing straight up and down nose, his one constant feature.  The nostrils slanted slightly upward, making shadows there.  You got to know these things after watching him attentively.  Anne loved his mouth best of all, cross one minute (only never with Colin), sweet the next, tilted at the corners, ready for his laughter.