' Criticise,' she said.
He looked at it a moment in silence.
' It's very good,' he said; ' but you still want the—the big softness of it all. It is still a little hard.'
She sighed.
' I knew you would say that,' she said, ' and it's perfectly true. Perhaps I shall get to be able to do it in time. It's all very well to say that a sketch is merely a matter of line and colour, but it isn't; there is a “ feeling ” which is beyond either.'
She took it back from him.
' Anyone could see it was painted by an American,' she observed.
Bertie laughed.
' That's where you are wrong,' he said; ' most Americans would say it was done by an Englishwoman.'
She smiled to herself with a secret pleasure, laid her sketch by her to dry, slid off the trunk where she had been sitting, and sat down on the grass by her husband.
' Read to me again,' she said. ' Read that song that ends:
'" The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmur of innumerable bees."'
She leaned her head on his shoulder, and sat with eyes half-closed, as in his low, gentle voice he read through the exquisite passage.
' It is English,' she said, when he had finished; ' and, oh, Bertie, that means a lot to me. Bertie, are you happy?'
He closed the book, and sat thinking a moment before he answered her. It was true that he had never supposed that he was capable of being so happy as he had been in these last three months. It was true also that his affection for his wife had grown with every day they had passed together, yet the question was a difficult one to answer. A few months ago, had she asked him in his present mood the same
