The
bishop and Denis were likewise on the verge of departure. A break-up
was at hand.
Mr. Keith alone refused to budge. He was waiting for the first cicada
whose strident call was due, he declared, in a week's time. Till then
he proposed to remain on Nepenthe.
Fancy waiting for an insect," said his friend van Koppen. "I believe,
Keith, you've got a sentimental streak somewhere."
"I have been fighting against it all my life. A man ought to dominate
his reflexes. But if the insect keeps good time--why not?"
He was in an elegiac mood, though he meant to drive away his cares
later in the evening by the "Falernian system." He felt the exodus in
the air. Another spring drawing to its close--everybody scattering! He
was filled, too, with that peculiar pensiveness which troubles complex
people when they have done a kindly act. Virtue had gone out of him.
He had wrought a miracle.
The moist look in the eye of his hostess testified to the miracle; so
did her frock which, being of pink muslin, harmonized with the state of
her mind but not with her complexion.
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