That will tell you about the deserts."
"And the devils?"
"Ah, I keep them to myself."
"Do you?" she said, softly. "I have just read your poems over again."
Cliffe gave a slight start, then looked indifferent.
"Have you? But they were written three years ago. Dieu merci, one finds
new devils like new acquaintances."
She shook her head.
"What do you mean?" he asked her, half amused, half arrested.
"They are always the old," she said, in a low voice. Their eyes met. In
hers was the same veiled, restless melancholy as in his own. Together
with the dazzling air of youth that surrounded her, the cherished,
flattered, luxurious existence that she and her house suggested, they
made a strange impression upon him. "Does she mean me to understand that
she is not happy?" he thought to himself. But the next moment she was
engaged in a merry chatter with the Dean, and all trace of the mood she
had thus momentarily shown him had vanished.
Half-way through the luncheon, Ashe came in. He appeared, fresh and
smiling, irreproachably dressed, and showing no trace whatever of the
hard morning of official work he had just passed through, nor of the
many embarrassments which, as every one knew, were weighing on the
Foreign Office.
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