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The figure of a woman passed in view at the nearest window a tall figure with pale summer clothes of some sort, and a broad summer hat a flitting effect of diaphanous shadow between him and the light which streamed from the casement. Theron felt a little shiver run over him, as if the delicate coolness of the changing night-air had got into his blood.
"It do beat all," said Theron a month later to Helen Raymond, who was again a visitor at the farm, "it do beat all, Helen, what's come over yer aunt. She used ter be nervous-like, and fretted, an' things never went ter suit. Now she's calm, an' her eyes kind o' shine 'specially when she comes in from one of them tramps of hers outdoors.
I'm sure to find her at home, she's tied hand and foot with that brood of hers and you'd better give me some of that candy for them." Theron nodded his approval and thanks, and relapsed into silence. When the meal was over, he brought out the confectionery to his wife, and without a word went back to that remarkable book.
In part by jocose inquiries addressed to the expectant groom, in part by the confidences of the postmaster at the corners concerning the bulk and frequency of the correspondence passing between Theron and the now remote Alice they had followed the progress of the courtship through the autumn and winter with friendly zest.
"It is like Heine simply a love-poem," said the girl, over her shoulder. Theron followed now with all his senses, as she carried the Ninth Nocturne onward.
"I don't think he would be wishing to see YOU," she replied. It was evident from her tone that she suspected the visitor's intentions. Theron smiled in spite of himself. "I have not come as a clergyman," he explained, "but as a friend of the family. If you will tell Miss Madden that I am here, it will do just as well. Yes, we won't bother him. If you will kindly hand my card to his sister."
Theron sat languidly at the head of the table while these common-place matters passed in their course, noting the intonations of Gorringe's voice as he read from his secretary's book, and finding his ear displeased by them. No issue arose upon any of these trivial affairs, and the minister, feeling faint and weary in the heat, wondered why Sister Soulsby had insisted on his coming.
In the thicket up the side-hill above him a gray squirrel was chattering shrilly, and the birds sang in a tireless choral confusion. Theron smiled, and drew a long breath. The gay clamor of the woodland songsters, the placid radiance of the landscape, were suddenly taken in and made a part of his new mood. He listened, smiled once more, and then started in a leisurely way back toward Octavius.
In the extract we have already given from Agatharcides respecting Arabia, he expressly mentions that the Gerrheans and Sabeans are the centre of all the commerce that passes between Asia and Europe, and that these are the nations which have enriched the Ptolemais: this statement, taken in conjunction with the fact that his description of the coast of the Red Sea reaches no farther than Sabaea on the one side, and Ptolemais Theron on the other, seems decisive of the truth of the opinion, that in the time of Philometor the Egyptians did not trade directly to India.
The problem really disturbed the young minister's mind throughout the meal, and his abstraction became so marked at last that his wife commented upon it. "A penny for your thoughts!" she said, with cheerful briskness. This ancient formula of the farm-land had always rather jarred on Theron. It presented itself now to his mind as a peculiarly aggravating banality.
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