a and Petrarch,
and she, seated with half-closed eyes beneath the Bayfield elms, saw
the pair beside the waters of Vaucluse, saw the roses and orange-trees
and arid plains of Provence, and wondered at the trouble in their
spiritual love. She was not troubled; love as "a dureless content and
a trustless joy" lay outside of her knowledge, and she had no desire
to prove it. In this only she forgot the difference between Raoul's
age and hers.

The day came when his work was ended. They spent a great part of that
afternoon in the garden, now in the height of its midsummer glory.
Raoul was very silent.

"But this must not end. It cannot end so!" he groaned once or twice.

He never forgot for long his old spite against Time.

"It will never end for me," she murmured.

"Of what are you made, then, that you look forward to living on
shadows?--one would say, almost cheerfully! I believe you could be
happy if you never saw me again!"

"Even if that had to be," she answered gravely, "while I knew you
loved me I should never be quite unhappy. But you must find a way,
while you can, to come sometimes; yes, you must come."

CHAPTER VIII

CORPORAL ZEALLY INTERVENES

Dorothea sat in the great hall of Bayfield, between the lamplight and
the moonlight, listening to the drip of the fountain beneath its tiny
cupola. A midsummer moon-ray fell through the uncurtained lantern
beneath the dome and spread in a small pool of silver at her feet.
Beneath one of the two shaded lamps Endymion lounged in his armchair
and read the Sherborne Mercury. Narcissus had carried off the other to
a table across the hall by the long bookcase, and above the pot-plants
banked about the fountain she saw it shining on his shapely grey head
as he bent over a copy of the Antonine Itinerary and patiently worked
out a new theory of its distances. Her own face rested in deep shadow,
and she felt grateful for it as she leaned back thinking her own
thoughts. It was a whole week now since Charles had visited Bayfield,
but she had encountered him that morning in Axcester High Street as
she passed up it on horseback with her brothers. Narcissus had reined
up to put some question or other about the drawings, but Endymion (who
did not share his brother's liking for M. Raoul) had ridden on, and
she had ridden on too, though reluctantly. She recalled his salute,
his glance at her, and down-dropped eyes; she wondered what point
Narcissus and he had discussed, a