she had the genius of intuition; she had seen what the great Oxford
critic had not been able to see.

The sound of the fiddling ceased as suddenly as it had begun; and over
the grey house and the green garden was the peace of heaven and of the
enfolding hills.

Jewdwine breathed a sigh of contentment at the close of the great
chorus in the second Act. After all, Rickman was the best antidote to
Rickman.

But Lucia was looking ardent again, as if she were about to speak.

"Don't, Lucy," he murmured.

"Don't what?"

"Don't talk any more about him now. It's too hot. Wait till the cool
of the evening."

"I thought you wanted me to play to you then."

Jewdwine looked at her; he noted the purity of her face, the beautiful
pose of her body, stretched in the deck-chair, her fine white hands
and arms that hung there, slender, inert and frail. He admired these
things so much that he failed to see that they expressed not only
beauty but a certain delicacy of physique, and that her languor which
appealed to him was the languor of fatigue.

"You might play to me, now," he said.