He could talk with her as if he talked
with a man like himself--but with a zest no man could give him.
It was evident that the good things she had said at first came as the
natural expression of a broad stream of alert thought; they were no mere
display specimens from one of those jackdaw collections of bright things
so many clever women waste their wits in accumulating. She was not
talking for effect at all, she was talking because she was tremendously
interested in her discovery of the spectacle of history, and delighted
to find another person as possessed as she was.
Belinda having been conducted to her shops, the two made their way
through the bright evening sunlight to the compact gracefulness of the
cathedral. A glimpse through a wrought-iron gate of a delightful
garden of spring flowers, alyssum, aubrietia, snow-upon-the-mountains,
daffodils, narcissus and the like, held them for a time, and then they
came out upon the level, grassy space, surrounded by little ripe old
houses, on which the cathedral stands. They stood for some moments
surveying it.
"It's a perfect little lady of a cathedral," said Sir Richmond. "But
why, I wonder, did we build it?"
"Your memory ought to be better than mine," she said, with her
half-closed eyes blinking up at the sunlit spire sharp against the blue.
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