CHAPTER X
Maud had scarcely gone when her husband came in. Most opportunely as he entered she had just taken up a volume of the Kelmscott Chaucer, and was reading it. The action had not been entirely spontaneous; she expected him to be back very soon, and it would certainly please him to see her already using his gift to her. Lucia never neglected the small change of kindness and pleasure-giving, just as she never forgot to tip a porter. She just smiled and nodded at him as he entered, and went on reading; it would please him better to see her absorbed in the book than that she should pay any attention to him. He paused behind her chair a moment, saw what she was reading, and passed on very complacently to the tea-table.
Then Lucia roused herself.
"Yes, dear, I'll come and give you tea in a moment," she said; "but, oh, Edgar, I must just read you a line. Listen—
"'Whan Zephiras eek with his swetë breathe
Enspired hath in every holte and heethe
The tender croppës and the yongë sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfë coura ironne
And smalë fowlës maken melodie,
That slepen alle the night with open eye.'
Oh, is not spring there? Do you see the daffodils? There, I will give you tea. I won't neglect you for the daffodils. Ring, darling, will you? This tea has been standing, and I will not permit you to drink tepid tannin."
He laid his hand on her head a moment.
"Yes, I see my daffodils," he said.
He rang the bell and came back to her.
"What magic there is in words," he said. "Words always seem to me to have a music and a colour of their own as melodious as a symphony, as vivid as a Giorgione. It isn't only what they mean; it is the words themselves. Let me cap your Chaucer—
"'Der Winter floh, und Lenz ist Da.'"
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