At the sound of his approach she turned and looked
at him. She had thrown a black lace scarf over her head, and in this
sombre setting her face seemed thin and unhappy. He remembered afterwards
that her eyes, as they met his, expressed not so much sorrow as profound
discontent.
To his surprise she stepped toward him with a detaining gesture.
"Mr. Lewis Danyers, I believe?"
He bowed.
"I am Mrs. Anerton. I saw your name on the visitors' list and wished to
thank you for an essay on Mr. Rendle's poetry--or rather to tell you how
much I appreciated it. The book was sent to me last winter by Mrs.
Memorall."
She spoke in even melancholy tones, as though the habit of perfunctory
utterance had robbed her voice of more spontaneous accents; but her smile
was charming. They sat down on a stone bench under the ilexes, and she
told him how much pleasure his essay had given her. She thought it the
best in the book--she was sure he had put more of himself into it than
into any other; was she not right in conjecturing that he had been very
deeply influenced by Mr. Rendle's poetry? _Pour comprendre il faut aimer_,
and it seemed to her that, in some ways, he had penetrated the poet's
inner meaning more completely than any other critic. There were certain
problems, of course, that he had left untouched; certain aspects of that
many-sided mind that he had perhaps failed to seize--
"But then you are young," she concluded gently, "and one could not wish
you, as yet, the experience that a fuller understanding would imply.
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