I'm a vile bad host but I can't help it. At the present moment
for example I'm undergoing grinding torments and it doesn't amuse
me to make conversation, so you two can cut along and disport
yourselves in any way you like. Give Lawrence a drink, will you,
my love? . . . . Oh no, thanks, you've done a lot but you can't
do any more, no one can, I just have to grin and bear it. Laura,
would you mind ringing for Barry? I'm not sure I shall show up
again before dinner-time. It's no end good of you, old chap, to
come to such a beastly house. . ."

He pursued them with banal gratitude till they were out of
earshot, when Lawrence drew a deep breath as if to throw off
some physical oppression. Under the weathered archway, down the
flagged steps and over the lawn. . . . How still it was, and how
sweet! The milk-blooms in the spire of the acacia were beginning
to turn faintly brown, but its perfume still hung in the valley
air, mixed with the honey-heavy breath of a great white double
lime tree on the edge of the stream. There were no dense woods
at Wanhope, the trees were set apart with an airy and graceful
effect, so that one could trace the course of their branches; and
between them were visible hayfields from which the hay had
recently been carried, and the headlands of the Plain--fair
sunny distances, the lowlands bloomed over with summer mist, the
uplands delicately clear like those blue landscapes that in early
Italian pictures lie behind the wheel of Saint Catherine or the
turrets of Saint Barbara.

"A sweet pretty place you have here. I was in China nine weeks
ago. Everlasting mud huts and millet fields. I must say there's
nothing to beat an English June."

"Or a French June?" suggested Laura, her accent faintly sly.
"Lucian said he met you at Auteuil."

"Dear old Lucian! He seemed very fit, but rather worried about
you, Laura--may I call you Laura? We're cousins by marriage,
which constitutes a sort of tie. Besides, you let me at
Farringay."

"Farringay. . . . What a long while ago it seems! I can't keep
up any pretence of juvenility with you, can I? We were the same
age then so we're both thirty-six now. Isn't it strange to think
that half one's life is over? Mine doesn't seem ever to have
begun. But you wouldn't feel that: a man's life is so much
fuller than a woman's. You've been half over the world while
Berns and I have been patiently cultivating our cabbage patch.
I envy you: it would