close to her that she could see the infinitesimal criss-cross of lines upon the backs of his hands and the stronger seams upon his reddened neck.  She saw the glisten of a few grey hairs in the dark thick patch above his ear; she could see the texture of his lip as it pouted beneath the sideways hang of his pipe.  She wondered why anyone ever really loved someone else; looked at like that, and thought of clearly, reasonably, they did not look very wonderful, but only obvious flesh and blood, enclosing something that, try as one might, must always remain alien, cut off.  Yet she knew that, reason as she might, this particular piece of flesh and blood, animated by this particular soul, had power over hers that her leaping pulses at the very sound of his footfalls, that her eager planning mind at night in her bed, would not let her deny.  Suddenly she looked away from him, and, twisting her hands in the dew-wet grass, spoke.  “I’ve written to Val,” she said.

Ishmael did not answer, and she went on: 

“You don’t seem very interested, but I’m so full of it I must tell someone.  After all one doesn’t break off an engagement every day....”

He turned towards her then, dropped his pipe, and looked full at her.

“You mean that?  You have definitely done it?”

“Undone it,” she said cheerfully; “it would never have answered.  I’ve known that for ages.  He’s so much cleverer than I am, but so much less wise!  He’s just a nice boy who would be the ordinary simple kind if it weren’t for his music.  And even there we can’t agree, you see.”

“I’m not clever—­not the kind that can do clever things,” said Ishmael.

“It’s not the doing clever things that matters, I’ve come to the conclusion, though Val would think that was heresy.  Being things matters more, somehow.  He knows all about music, and they say he’s going to be the great English composer, and I only know that even a barrel-organ in the street has always made me feel what I used to call when I was small all ‘live-y and love-y.’”

“There is nothing one can get drunk on like music and poetry,” said Ishmael slowly.  “Pictures one needs to understand before they can intoxicate, and prose can fill and satisfy you, but it’s only the other two one can go mad on, and this—­”

He pulled her to him, a hand beneath her chin, his other arm round her sturdy, soft little body, and she met his eyes bravely for a moment.  Then hers closed, but he still paused before he kissed her.

“Georgie, are you sure?” he asked.  “Have you thought over all the drawbacks?”

“Such as—?”

“My brothers ... even my son, who will have to come before any we may have....  I don’t want any more bad blood over this heritage, Georgie!  And I—­I’m a good many years older than you—­”

“And terribly sot in your ways, as Mrs. Penticost says ...” murmured Georgie.  “Ishmael, aren’t you going to ...?”