Secret BreadJesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
General
Secret Bread
Jesse, F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Fiction
Thus it came about that Killigrew and Judy, a couple of hours later,
coming to the plateau, found Georgie there, busy over a sketch of
Ishmael in profile, with his head telling dark against the grey sunlit
cliff wall, because Georgie said it was easier to paint dark against
light. She was really working in her vivid, effective way, and Killigrew
found little to criticise.
Judy was no longer looking tired. Joe had met her perfectly, holding her
away and looking into her eyes in the whimsical tender way he had as
though he were saying: "It's absurd, isn't it, to make out what we did
together is of any importance, and yet as long as we're human beings we
can't help feeling it's wonderful ..." and he had thanked her, hardly in
words, for the hours of the night before, though there had been words
too, as she had buried her head against him. With that and her usual
careful aids to beauty Judy was glowing, and though there was never a
shade of possessiveness in her manner towards Killigrew, yet this
morning there was so much of confidence and possession of herself that
it almost amounted to the same thing when she made her appearance by his
side.
Georgie declared a rest when the two of them appeared, and Ishmael also
came to look at what she had been doing. He was standing a little behind
her and looking down, not so much at the painting as at the back of her
bent neck, where the absurd little drake's tails curved against the
skin, so white in the sunshine. One ear was rosy where the light shone
through it, and behind it lay a soft blue crescent of shadow.
As he looked that odd something occurred to Ishmael which suddenly puts
a person in a new light--the slipping of the plane, the freakish turn of
the kaleidoscope which makes the new light strike at a fresh angle
something seen before and makes it different. He fell in love with
Georgie in that moment, staring at her bent neck and the curve of her
ear.
All day a delightful exaltation possessed him; he was not yet at the
stage when a man is plagued with doubts of success or advisability; he
was only tingling with a new delight. He helped her along any rough
place when they all walked over to the Vicarage to tea with a joy he had
not felt the day before, and he did not even know how irrational it all
was.
At tea the conversation turned on different types of men, and Killigrew
held forth on what he held to be the only true and vital classification.
"The only division in mankind is the same as the only division in the
animal world, of course," he said.
"What is that?" asked the Parson. "Wild and tame?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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