The Annam Jewel by Patricia Wentworth Page A

He says writing poetry’s as easy as falling out of bed.”
    â€œIs it, Cyril?” said Sylvia wickedly.
    â€œIt depends on what you call poetry,” said Cyril loftily.
    Sylvia giggled. She was enjoying herself very much.
    â€œOh!” she said, clapping her hands. “I’ve got the loveliest idea. It really is simply the loveliest. You shall both write some poetry for me. It will be too exciting. You know I simply adore poetry. I suppose it’s because I was born in the East, and I always think the East is so frightfully romantic and poetic.”
    Peter had been fidgeting with a loose piece of cane on the arm of his chair. Suddenly his fingers were still, and he said slowly:
    â€œI was born in the East, too.”
    Sylvia clapped her hands again.
    â€œThat’s another Link,” she said. “I mean a Link between us—between Peter and me.”
    She nodded at Cyril Marling, who seemed far from pleased.
    â€œPeter’s saving my life was the first Link; and our both being born in the East is the second. I do wonder what the third will be. Of course there’ll have to be a third. Things always go in threes, you know.”
    â€œWhere were you born?” said Peter in a slow, deep voice.
    â€œI was born in Annam,” said Sylvia Coverdale.
    Peter got up with a jerk that upset his chair. Without a word he strode across the terrace and went stumbling down the steps that led into the garden.
    Sylvia and the Jewel; the Jewel and Sylvia. That was the third Link. Peter felt the wonder and the glory of it as an overwhelming wave. Practically it stunned him. He did not know where his feet had carried him until he found himself on the river’s brink. His feet were almost in the water. Dark willows swept down into the stream, the moonlight lay upon it like light upon a looking-glass. Peter saw nothing but Sylvia’s face and Sylvia’s eyes, more beautiful than any jewel in the world.

CHAPTER X
    Next day Sylvia smiled sweetly upon Peter, and asked him if he would take her on the river. She was out with him all the morning. In the afternoon she and Cyril detached themselves from the rest of the party and were seen no more.
    Peter penetrated into the library, discovered and took down Beeton’s Great Book of Poetry , and sat for two hours, alternately glaring at the printed page and tapping out metres upon the library table. At the end of the time he compiled what he thought would be a useful list of rhymes, and plunged into verse.
    Miss Coverdale came into Sylvia’s room that evening and found her in a state of high amusement and delight.
    â€œOh, Sylvia, you’ll be late for dinner,” said Miss Coverdale.
    Sylvia shook her head. She was seated before her looking-glass attired in a very flimsy white slip. She had just finished doing her hair, and was engaged in improving the arch of her eyebrows with a soft pencil. She giggled and looked over her shoulder at Miss Coverdale.
    â€œGuess what’s happened, Jane Anne,” she said. “A perfectly priceless thing.”
    Her cheeks were very pink, and her eyes very blue.
    â€œOh, my dear, nothing dreadful, I hope.”
    â€œNow, Jane Ann—dreadful? No, it’s Peter.”
    â€œWhat about him?” Miss Coverdale’s tone was anxious.
    Sylvia jumped up and began to dance round the room, holding up her short skirts and singing in her pretty, clear voice:
    â€œPeter’s fallen in love with me,
    Peter’s fallen in love with me;
    With me, with capital M, E, Me.
    Jane Ann, he’s fallen in love with me.”
    â€œNonsense, Sylvia.”
    â€œOh, people do, you know.”
    Sylvia stopped dancing and picked up a frightfully crumpled sheet of paper from among the odds and ends which littered her dressing-table.
    â€œRead this, you unbelieving Jewess of a Jane Ann,” she said. “No, I’ll read it out to you, or you’ll miss the full beauty of it.”
    She