He looked up
in her face, and the room was like a place of open water where
heaven is mirrored in earth, and earth reflects and answers heaven.
St. George laughed a little for sheer, inextinguishable happiness.
"Once," he said, "once I breakfasted with you, on tea and--if I
remember correctly--gold and silver muffins. Won't you breakfast
with me now?"
Olivia looked down at him, her heart still clamourous with its
anxiety of the night and of the morning.
"Tell me where you can have been," she said only; "didn't you know
how distressed we would be? We imagined everything--in this dreadful
place. And we feared everything, and we--" but yet the "we" did not
deceive St. George; how could it with her eyes, for all their
avoidings, so divinely upon him?
"Did you," he said, "ah--did you wonder? I wish I knew!"
"And my father--where did you find him?" she besought. "It was you?
You found him, did you not?"
St. George looked down at a fold of her gown that was fallen across
his knee. How on earth was he ever to move, he wondered vaguely, if
the slightest motion meant the withdrawing of that fold.
Pages:
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417