Quivering and tuneful it soared, now almost invisible against the blue, but easily seen again when a white cloud rolled up behind it, and the shadow preceding it turned the fresh emerald of the down grass to a dark purplish green. At that the delicate trembling hints of spring suddenly crystallised in Keelings heart into strong definite emotion. It was young, it sang to its mate as it climbed into the sky....
No: only the wind and the song of a skylark.The remembrance of this odious suggestion was the only thing that seemed to cloud the serenity of Mrs Keelings horizon: indeed it scarcely did that, and corresponded rather to a very slight fall in the barometer, though no signs of untoward weather were anywhere visible. She did not often think of it, but she knew that it had not (like so many more important things) entirely vanished from her mind, and when she did think of it, it produced this slight declension from weather otherwise set fair. But immediately afterwards her thistle-down reflections would flutter away to the pearl-pendant, the Inverbroom visit, and the baronetage.Mr Keeling ceased to address the larch-trees that were the sponsors of his houses name, and turned round."That's all right, Harry, I withdraw the request."And what, if it was possible to introduce the hard angles of practical issues into these suffused dimnesses, was to be the end or even the continuation of this critical yet completely uneventful history? All the conduct, the habit, the traditions of his life were in utter discord with it. If he looked at it, even as far as it had gone, in the hard dry light which hitherto had guided him in his life, he could hardly think it credible that it was the case of Thomas Keeling which was under his scrutiny. But even more unconjecturable was the outcome. He could see no path of any sort ahead. If by some chance momentous revelation he knew that she wanted him with that quality of wanting which was his, what would happen? His whole reasonable and upright self revolted from the idea of clandestine intrigue, and with hardly less emphasis did it reject the idea of an honest, open, and deplorable break-up of his well-earned reputation and respectability. He could not really contemplate either course, but of the two the first was a shade the farther away from the confines of possibility. And if some similar revelation told him that he was nothing to Norah beyond a kind, just employer with certain tastes and perceptions akin to her own? There was no path{256} there either: he could not see how to proceed.... But he experienced no sense of self-censure in having got himself into this impossible place. It had not been his fault: only those who were quite ignorant of the nature of love could blame him for loving. A fish who did not need the air might as well say to a drowning man, It is quite unnecessary to breathe; you have only to make a determined effort, and convince yourself that you neednt breathe. Look at me: I dont breathe, and I swim about in the utmost comfort. It is very wrong to breathe!THE HELMSMAN AT HIS POST. THE HELMSMAN AT HIS POST.
