head and be reasonably
calm. There _had_ been a certain narrowness in the tragic separation of
two happy children if the only reason for it had been that the mother of
one was a pretty, frivolous, much gossiped about woman belonging to a
rather too rapid set. And if it had been a reason then, how would it
present itself now? What would happen to an untouched dream if argument
and disapproval crashed into it? If his first intensely passionate
impulse had been his desire to save it even from the mere touch of
ordinary talk and smiling glances because he had felt that they would
spoil the perfect joy of it, what would not open displeasure and
opposition make of the down on the butterfly's wing--the bloom on the
peach? It was not so he phrased in his thoughts the things which
tormented him, but the figures would have expressed his feeling. What if
his mother were angry--though he had never seen her angry in his life
and could only approach the idea because he had just found out that she
had once been cruel--yes, it had been cruel! What if Coombe actually
chose to interfere. Coombe with his unmoving face, his perfection of
exact phrase and his cold almost inhuman eye! After all the matter
concerned him closely.

"While Houses threaten to crumble and Heads may fall into the basket
there are things we must remember until we disappear," he had said not
long ago with this same grey eye fixed on him. "I have no son. If
Marquisates continue to exist you will be the Head of the House of
Coombe."

What would _he_ make of a dream if he handled it? What would there be
left? Donal's heart burned in his side when he recalled Feather's
impudent little laugh as she had talked of her "vagabond Robin," her
"small pariah." He was a boy entranced and exalted by his first passion
and because he was a sort of young superman it was not a common one,
though it shared all the unreason and impetuous simplicities of the most
rudimentary of its kind. He could not think very calmly or logically;
both the heaven and the earth in him swept him along as with the rush of
the spheres. It was Robin who was foremost in all his thoughts. It was
because she was so apart from all the world that it had seemed beautiful
to keep her so in his heart. She had always been so aloof a little
creature--so unclaimed and naturally left alone. Perhaps that was why
she had retained through the years the untouched look which he had
recognised even at the dance, in the eye