Argosy (UK), January 1955 — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE PICTURE a Day by day, that painted phantom on the wall _ looked down, smiling by WALTER DE LA MARE UCIA drew back at last from the shelter and shadow of the © crimson, black-lined curtain. Its folds screened an upper — window, a shallow bow in shape. From out of its small panes — - ____ she had been watching her husband. xz In this last strange year, the first of her married life, she had learnt many things about him. She had learnt that his loyalty ___ and tenderness, his unwearying, secret consideration for her were — not merely due to the funny little fact that simply could not be — _ denied—that he was years and years older than she was; but | also because he was wholly himself and—well, loved her. : As she loved him? That question, as she had stood, one hand — gently resting on the curtain, her dark eyes fixed, ‘had again crept like some predatory little animal into her thoughts. Could — it possibly be as much? This dreadful question of age. He © seemed to be so much less apprehensive of his leaving her than — was she of his going. Besides . The rounded lids above those unusually dark eyes echoed, as it were, the curve of cheek and chin. Her other hand lay on a her breast. The sun shone hot on the flawed eighteenth-century glass of — the white-framed window. This room of her husband’s was like - + a little hothouse in the sunshine of early afternoon; and it oo she would draw the black-lined, crimson curtains to keep it cool _ for his coming back. ; Another thing she had learnt was that, to him, habit of spirit, of mind and body resembled the serene sky of a St. Martin’s summer. Then why—instead of quietly busying himself with trowel or spud—was he merely standing looking down on a bed ~ crammed with sweet williams in full bloom? Palest pink, auricular eyes, scarlet, blood-red, deepest crimson—his favourite flower. | “Second childhood, my dear,” he had remarked more than — once, as they had stood there, admiring them together. “I might as well be five again, in a holland pinafore, and my — mother...” Paes com