"I remember!" he rejoined, as he raised his hat in farewell. "And do you think you will learn Greek?"
"I am sure I will!--as soon as ever all these people are gone. The week after next I shall be quite free again."
"And happy?"
She hesitated.
"Not quite, perhaps, but as happy as I ever can be! Good-bye!"
She held out her hand. He pressed it gently, and let her go, watching her as she moved along the road holding up her dainty skirt from the dust, and walking with the ease and graceful carriage which was, to her, second nature. Then he went into his own garden with the Iliad, and addressing his ever attentive and complaisant dog, said: "Look here, Nebbie--we mustn't think about her! She's a bewildering little person, with a good deal of the witch glamour in her eyes and smile,--and it's quite absurd for such staid and humdrum creatures as you and I, Nebbie, to imagine that we can ever be of the slightest service to her, or to dream that she ever gives us a single thought when she has once turned her back upon us. But it is a pity she should cry about anything!--her eyes were not made for tears--her life was not created for sorrow! It should be all sunshine and roses for her--French damask roses, of course!" and he smiled--"with their hearts full of perfume and their petals full of colour! As for me, there should only be the grey of her plots of lavender,--lavender that is dried and put away in a drawer, and more often than not helps to give fragrance to the poor corpse ready for burial!"
He sighed, and opened his Homer. Greek, for once, failed to ease his heartache, and the Iliad seemed singularly over-strained and deadly dull.