The evening lengthened out into long, clear hours and thoughts of the
green lanes; and to escape from hauntings of Owen--the music-room it
seemed still to hold echoes of his voice--she asked him to walk out with
her. They wandered in the cloudless evening. They sauntered past the
picture gallery, and the fact that she was walking with this strange and
somewhat ambiguous young man provoked her to think of herself and him as
a couple from that politely wanton assembly which had collected at
eventide to watch a pavane danced beneath the beauty of a Renaissance
colonnade, and to accentuate the resemblance Evelyn fluttered her
parasol and said, pointing across the yellow meadows--
"Look at those idle clouds, the afternoon is falling asleep."
She walked for some time touched with the sentiment that the evening
landscape inspired, a little uncertain whether he would like to talk
further about his spiritual nature, and whether she should rest
contented with what she knew on that subject. "It is only curiosity, but
I wonder how he would make love--how he'd begin? I wonder if he cares
for women?" It was some time before she could get Ulick to talk of
himself; he seemed to strive to change the conversation back to artistic
questions. He seemed absorbed in himself; it seemed difficult to awaken
him out of his absent-mindedness. At last he spoke suddenly, as was his
habit, and she learned that the scene of his first love-making was a
beautiful Normandy park. He was more explicit about the park than the
lady, and he seemed to lay special stress on the fact that the great
saloon in the castle was hung with a faded tapestry. The story seemed to
Evelyn a little obscure, but she gathered that Ulick had been tragically
separated from her, whether by the intervention of another woman or
through his own fault did not seem clear. The story was vague as a
legend, and Evelyn was not certain that Ulick had not invented the park
and the tapestries as characteristic decorations of a love story as it
should happen to him, if it did happen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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