It can't have been done by a firm; the taste is too individual, too certain.'
' Mr. Palmer did it,' said Bertie. ' I fancy he ordered every individual thing, down to the smallest details.'
' I fancied it must be he; Mrs. Palmer is a little more voulu—more bird of Paradise.'
She laughed.
' I can't help laughing,' she said. ' To anyone with any eye for human comedy the scene at tea was delicious. She is a great dear, and I am very fond of her; but, frankly, she and Gallio together were extraordinarily funny. I love contrasts—notes of jarring colour.'
Bertie did not laugh.
' I was furious with Gallio,' he said; ' he tried to make a fool of her.'
' Assuredly he did not succeed,' said Sybil. ' Mrs. Palmer was delighted with him. Anyhow, he had to be polite or rude; he chose to be extremely polite.'
' Amelie saw,' said Bertie briefly, and the subject dropped.
They strolled back in the enveloping light of the sunset, which flooded and pervaded the air with level rays. The glades where he had sat with his wife that morning were full of the soft luminousness of the sun, which entered below the leafy boughs of the thick trees and lit them from end to end with a wonderful glory. Birds were busy with their evensong in the bushes, and, as at noonday, the countless hum of insects was still in the air. Bertie, still rather disturbed for Amelie's sake at the little tea-time comedy, felt soothed by the leisurely tranquillity of the hour, and the two others, a little apart, passed from time to time some whispered confidence. But the mellow call of the bell from the Elizabethan turret warned them that the minutes to dinner-time were numbered, and they briskened their steps back to the house. The other two went upstairs, but
