Page:Dark Hester.djvu/151

Rheims, Beauvais, Chartres, Bourges and Vézelay;—all the cathedrals she and Clive had visited together.

‘Isn’t that lovely of the interior of Amiens,’ she said. ‘It’s like a white foxglove, I always think; all rising lightness and grace.—You’ve seen them?’

‘Only Chartres.’

‘There’s nothing to compare to Chartres, of course.—You remember this view from below?—And this of the West front?’

‘Pretty well. Unfortunately I didn’t see the windows. It was during the war and they were covered up.’

‘I should rather like to see it quite dark like that. It would be another sort of sublimity.—You ought to go to all the French cathedrals one day.’

‘I must,’ said Ingpen; ‘I must take Norah and your fragile young friend and see them all.’ He looked round at her from the pictures. ‘Will you come, too? Why not all four of us go and live in France and see cathedrals?’

Was it a covert recognition of her plight? She smiled it away. ‘One might find a worse way of spending the evening of one’s days.’

‘I mean it, you know.’ He scrutinized her. ‘You were right about this climate. It’s sodden. Why,