"It's not altogether a bad sort of view--is it?" some one said,
in English.
The voice was a woman's. It was clear and smooth; it was
crisp-cut, distinguished.
Peter glanced about him.
On the opposite bank of the Aco, in the grounds of Ventirose,
five or six yards away, a lady was standing, looking at him,
smiling.
Peter's eyes met hers, took in her face . . . . And suddenly
his heart gave a jump. Then it stopped dead still, tingling,
for a second. Then it flew off, racing perilously.--Oh, for
reasons--for the best reasons in the world: but thereby hangs
my tale.
She was a young woman, tall, slender, in a white frock, with a
white cloak, an indescribable complexity of soft lace and airy
ruffles, round her shoulders. She wore no hat. Her hair,
brown and warm in shadow, sparkled, where it caught the light,
in a kind of crinkly iridescence, like threads of glass.
Peter's heart (for the best reasons in the world) was racing
perilously. "It's impossible--impossible--impossible"--the
words strummed themselves to its rhythm. Peter's wits (for had
not the impossible come to pass?) were in a perilous confusion.
But he managed to rise from his rustic bench, and to achieve a
bow.
She inclined her head graciously.
"You do not think it altogether bad--I hope?" she questioned,
in her crisp-cut voice, raising her eyebrows slightly, with a
droll little assumption of solicitude.
Peter's wits were in confusion; but he must answer her. An
automatic second-self, summoned by the emergency, answered for
him.
"I think one might safely call it altogether good."
"Oh--?" she exclaimed.
Her eyebrows went up again, but now they expressed a certain
whimsical surprise. She threw back her head, and regarded the
prospect critically.
"It is not, then, too spectacular, too violent?" she wondered,
returning her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to
defer to his opinion. "Not too much like a decor de theatre?"
"One should judge it," his automatic second-self submitted,
"with some leniency. It is, after all, only unaided Nature."
A spark flickered in her eyes, while she appeared to ponder.
(But I am not sure whether she was pondering the speech or its
speaker.) "Really?" she said, in the end. "Did did Nature build the
villas, and plant the cornfields?"
But his automatic second-self was on its mettle.
"Yes," it asserted boldly; "the kind of men who build villas
and plant cornfields must be classified as natural forces."
She gave a light little laugh--and again appeared to ponder for
a moment.