Maurice's tact, as delicate as a woman's, forced no sympathy upon her by an allusion to the scene they had just left. He talked lightly as they went through the shrubberies into the garden, for Felicia, forgetting the intention of her departure, did not speak of a long walk, and went slowly along the flower-beds, past the warm walls where fruit was ripening. She responded with grave smiles to his talk.
"Do you know," he said presently, stopping before her in a narrow path where small fruit-trees cast shadows upon them, "to-day you are not a bit a Watteau, but a Romney? The shade your hat makes across your brows and eyes is all Romney--Romney at his best. Do you mind being told that you only remind me of beautiful things?"
Felicia, finding him, for the first time, almost tactless, made no reply. She picked a small pear from the tree beside her. "Now _do_ you consider such a remark impertinent?" Maurice demanded. "You frighten me, you know. I feel in you such a _farouche_ fastidiousness. Our idealist in the drawing-room, now, can accept positively blaring compliments."
"Well, your appreciation of the shadow my hat makes could hardly be called that," said Felicia, biting into her pear; "I suppose I hardly know how to accept compliments gracefully--never having had any made me before."
"It's too funny! But you know that I am incapable of blaring before you. You know that, don't you?"
"How can I tell? I have known you just five days."
"Doesn't Lady Angela know you too? and does she know that you consider your compliments to her blaring?" Felicia, over her pear, was smiling at him now with her dryad-like malice.
"Ergo, if she is deceived in me you must be, and I am not at all trustworthy."
"No, no, indeed. Lady Angela doesn't know me as well as you do--in spite of your nipping reference to five days--and for the simple reason that she doesn't know herself; that inner blindness blurs all one's outer vision, you know. I am fond of her, really fond of her--she is, on the whole, a very good sort. But she seldom means what she thinks she means--and that's so disconcerting. Now you always mean just what you intend to mean."
The memory of Aunt Kate's grunt, dimmed already, was effaced by this frank analysis of his relation with Angela. Felicia hardly knew how deep was her own relief, but only glad that she was wresting no possession from anybody. When she came in after the subsequent talk, glancing and desultory as it had superficially seemed, her perturbation was of a new order. It was as if he had walked in upon her own particular garden--finding, during her momentary confusion, its gate ajar--had made its paths his own and, as it almost seemed, smoked a cigarette among its roses. Yet, with the perturbation, there was something perversely pleasing in the delicate desecration.