A white rose slipped from the cluster Maryllia held, and dropped on the grass.  John stooped for it, and gave it back to her.  Their hands just touched as she smiled her thanks.  There was nothing in the simple exchange of courtesies to move any self-possessed man from his normal calm, yet a sudden hot thrill and leap of the heart dazed Walden’s brain for a moment and made him almost giddy.  A sick fear—­ an indefinable horror of himself possessed him,—­caught by this mmameable transport of sudden and singular emotion, he felt he could have rushed away, away!—­anywhere out of reach and observation, and have never entered the fair and halcyon gardens of Abbot’s Manor again.  Why?—­in Heaven’s name, why?  He could not tell,—­but—­he had no right to be there!—­no right to be there!—­he kept on repeating to himself;—­he ought to have remained at home, shut up in his study with his dog and his books,—­alone, alone, always alone!  The brief tempest raged over his soul with soundless wind and fire,—­then passed, leaving no trace on his quiet features and composed manner.  But in that single instant an abyss had been opened in the depths of his own consciousness,—­an abyss into which he looked with amazement and dread at the strange foolhardiness which had involuntarily led him to its brink,—­and he now drew back from it, nervously shuddering.

“‘And would we hear it, we must hear it Now!’” repeated Adderley, with opportune bathos at this juncture—­“As I have said, and will always maintain, Omar’s verse always fits in with the happy approach of creature comforts!  Behold the illustration and example!—­Primmins with the tea!”

“It is a pretty verse, though, isn’t it?” queried Cicely, moving her chair aside to make more space for the butler and footman as they nimbly set out the afternoon tea-table in the deepest shade bestowed by the drooping cedar boughs—­“Isn’t it?”

And her searching eyes fastened themselves pertinaciously upon John’s face.

“Very pretty!” he answered, steadily—­“And—­so far-as it goes—­very true!”

XVII

After tea, they re-entered the house at Maryllia’s request to hear Cicely play.  Arrived in the drawing-room they found the only truly modern thing in it, a grand piano, of that noted French make which as far surpasses the German model as a genuine Stradivarius surpasses a child’s fiddle put together yesterday, and, taking her seat at this instrument, Cicely had transformed both herself and it into unspeakable enchantment.  The thing of wood and wire and ivory keys had become possessed, as it were, with the thunder of the battling clouds and the great rush of the sea,—­and then it had suddenly whispered of the sweetness of love and life, till out of storm had grown the tender calm of a flowing melody, on which wordless dreams of happiness glittered like rainbow bubbles on foam, shining for a moment and then vanishing at a breath;