Here and there,
as you went, glimmered daffodils, like the Pleiades half-veiled, and long
files of crocuses burned like waning fires.
Miss Percival, at about nine o'clock, came gently down one of these
alleys, with a scarf over her head and shoulders. She looked like a nymph
in Tanagra. And as if she knew where she was going, exactly, she walked
gently but unfalteringly between the linked crocus-beacons to where the
alley broadened into a bay of cut yews, to where ghostly white seats and a
dim sun-dial seemed disposed as for a scene in a comedy. The leaden statue
of a skipping faun would have been made out in a recess if you had known
it was there. And as she entered the place a figure seated there, with
elbows on knees and chin between his palms, looked up, listening, watching
intently, then rose and waited.
"Struan," said Miss Percival comfortably, "are you there?"
"I'm here," she was answered.
Thereupon she came easily forward and stood near him. She was in white
from top to toe; he could see the clean outline of her head and neck,
denned by the hooding scarf. He had not as yet taken off his hat, but now,
as she stood there silent, he slowly removed it. Still there was nothing
said.
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