Again she leaned back comfortably, smiling to herself, and there was a long silence.
It was a divinely beautiful August evening. From where they sat little could be seen except the long vista of the path, arched with hazels, whence the cat had now disappeared, ending in three old brick steps, wide and flat, lichened and mossed, set about with flowerpots and leading up to the yew walk. But the whole air was full of summer sound and life and scent, heavy and redolent, streaming in from the old box-lined kitchen-garden on their right beyond the hedge and from the orchard on the left. It was the kind of atmosphere suggesting Nature in her most sensible mood, full-blooded, normal, perfectly fulfilling her own vocation; utterly unmystical, except by very subtle interpretation; unsuggestive, since she was already saying all that could be said, and following out every principle by which she lived to the furthest confine of its contents. It presented the same kind of rounded-off completion and satisfactoriness as that suggested by an entirely sensuous and comfortable person. There were no corners in it, no vistas hinting at anything except at some perfectly normal lawn or set garden, no mystery, no implication of any other theory or glimpse of theory except that which itself proclaimed.
Something of its air seemed now to breathe in Maggie’s expression of contentment, as she smiled softly and happily, clasping her arms behind her head. She looked perfectly charming, thought Mabel; and she laid a hand delicately on her friend’s knee, as if to share in the satisfaction—to verify it by participation, so to speak.
“It doesn’t seem to have done you much harm,” she said.
“No, thank you; I’m extremely well and very content. I’ve looked through the door once, without in the least wishing to; and I don’t in the least want to look again. It’s not a nice view.”
“But about—er—religion,” said the younger girl rather awkwardly.