Page:Crome Yellow.djvu/179

 "Any damage done?" he called out. "Is that you, Denis? I’ve hurt my ankle so—and my knee, and my hand. I'm all in pieces."

"My poor Anne," he said. "But then," he couldn’t help adding, "it was silly to start running downhill in the dark."

“Ass!” she retorted in a tone of tearful irritation; "of course it was."

He sat down beside her on the grass, and found himself breathing the faint, delicious atmosphere of perfume that she carried always with her.

"Light a match," she commanded. "I want to look at my wounds."

He felt in his pockets for the match-box. The light spurted and then grew steady.

Magically, a little universe had been created, a world of colours and forms—Anne’s face, the shimmering orange of her dress, her white, bare arms, a patch of green turf—and round about a darkness that had become solid and utterly blind. Anne held out her hands; both were green and earthy with her fall, and the left exhibited two or three red abrasions.

"Not so bad," she said. But Denis was terribly distressed, and his emotion was intensified when, looking up at her face