Page:Crome Yellow.djvu/241
One elegant quatrain had flowed from beneath his pen:
“A brooding love which is at most
The stealth of moonbeams when they slide,
Evoking colour’s bloodless ghost,
O’er some scarce-breathing breast or side . . .”
when his attention was attracted by a sound from outside. He looked down from his window; there they were, Anne and Gombauld, talking, laughing together. They crossed the courtyard in front, and passed out of sight through the gate in the right-hand wall. That was the way to the green close and the granary; she was going to sit for him again. His pleasantly depressing melancholy was dissipated by a puff of violent emotion; angrily he threw his quatrain into the waste-paper basket and ran downstairs. “The stealth of moonbeams,” indeed!
In the hall he saw Mr. Scogan; the man seemed to be lying in wait. Denis tried to escape, but in vain. Mr. Scogan’s eye glittered like the eye of the Ancient Mariner.
“Not so fast,” he said, stretching out a small saurian hand with pointed nails—“not so fast. I was just going down to