Both had their mouths wide open, shouting, though the wind
carried their words all away unheard. And Jane Anne stood apart. Her
welcome, if the gesture is capable of being described at all, was a
bow. She moved at the same time sedately across the field, as though
she intended to be seen separately from the rest. She wore hat and
gloves. She was evidently in earnest with her welcome. But Mr. John
Henry Campden, the author and discoverer of them all, Minks did not
see.
'But I don't see the writer himself!' he cried. 'I don't see Mr.
Campden.'
'You can't,' explained Rogers, 'he's standing behind his wife.'
And the little detail pleased the secretary hugely. The true artist,
he reflected, is never seen in his work.
It all was past and over--in thirty seconds. The spire of the church,
rising against a crimson sky, with fruit trees in the foreground and a
line of distant summits across the shining lake, replaced the row of
wonderful dancing figures. Rogers sank back in his corner, laughing,
and Minks, saying nothing, went across to his own at the other end of
the compartment. It all had been so swift and momentary that it seemed
like the flash of a remembered dream, a strip of memory's pictures, a
vivid picture of some dazzling cinematograph. Minks felt as if he had
just read the entire story again from one end to the other--in thirty
seconds.
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