He looked up at her like a man who had been praying, and whose eyes saw a sign in the heavens. “Hallo! Up with the lark!” “Let’s go down to the Wilderness.” “Come along, Queen Mab.” “I’ve only got to put my frock on.” “You’re just the very thing I want.” * * * * * CHAPTER XXI THE WOMAN’S EYES IN THE EYES OF A CHILD Lynette asked her father to tell her a story. They were walking through the wet bracken on the edge of the larch wood, Canterton holding the child’s hand. “Presently, little Beech Leaf. A good fairy is talking to me, and I must listen.” “Then I’ll keep ever so quiet till she’s done.” Canterton had looked into the eyes of the child, and had seen the woman’s eyes, Eve’s eyes, in the child’s. For Eve’s eyes had been like the eyes of Lynette, till he, the man, had awakened a more primitive knowledge in them. He remembered how it had been said that the child is a finer, purer creation than either the man or the woman, and that the sex spirit is a sullying influence, blurring the more delicate colours; and Eve had had much of the child in her till he, in all innocence, had taught her to suffer. A great pity overtook him as he looked down at Lynette, and wondered how he would feel if some blind idealist were ever to make her suffer. His pity showed him what love had failed to discover. He understood of a sudden how blind, how obstinate, and over-confident he must have seemed to Eve. He had killed all the child in her, and aroused the woman, and then refused to see that she had changed. “I have been torturing her.” His compassion was touched with shame. “You are making it so impossible.” That cry of hers had a new pathos. It was she who had suffered, because she had seen things clearly, while he had been too masterful, too sure of himself, too oblivious of her youth. One could not put the language of Summer into the mouth of Spring. It was but part of the miracle of growth that he had been studying all these years. Certain and inevitable changes had to occur when the sun climbed higher and the sap rose. Canterton paused while they were in the thick of the larch wood. “Lynette, old lady!” “Yes, daddy?” “The fairy has just said that we ought to go and see Miss Eve.” “What a sensible fairy. Yes, do let’s go. She may let me see her do her hair.” Canterton smiled. He meant to carry Lynette on his shoulders into the garden of Orchards Corner, to hold her up as a symbol and a sign, to betray in the child his surrender. Assuredly it was possible for them to be healed. He would say, “Let’s go back into yesterday. Try and forgive me for being blind. We will be big children together, you and I, with Lynette.”