Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/427

 the dark line of a real forest. At an immense distance, out of the heat, the mountains appeared like a mirage. She stared for a long time, and presently she saw that what at first she had believed to be only sky was in reality a vast lake. As she looked, it seemed in a way to come alive, to be striking the reflection of the sky from a surface made of metal. It was a dark, empty country, wild and faintly sinister in its stillness. 

It was Swanson who saw them coming and went out to meet them on the edge of the forest. He had heard the news from a black runner on his way up the lake to join a party of German engineers who were bound inland. He was so changed that Philip looked at him for a moment with the air of a stranger. He was much thinner and had lost most of his hair. As if to compensate the loss, he had grown an immense sandy beard, which gave him the air of a comic monk. But the slow, china-blue eyes were the same, and the way of talking slowly, as if he were always afraid that his tongue would run faster than his dull brain.

Philip said, "This is my wife," and the shadow of Naomi suddenly fell on the three of them. "You got my letter?"

Poor Swanson had turned crimson, and stood awkwardly, holding his battered straw hat in his sausage-like hands. "No," he stammered. "No—what letter?"

For a moment there was a terrible silence. They both saw that he had expected Naomi. He had thought all the while that the woman he saw from afar off with the train of bearers that wound along the river was