Page:Magdalen by J S Machar.pdf/227



N black clothes, just as Jiří had brought her away that night, and in a black hat, from which a long veil fell over her face, with her sunshade tilted more to guard against the eyes of the people than against the sun, Lucy walked at about two o’clock in the afternoon over the common to the cemetery.

The day was clear. Again there had been a rainstorm in the night, and the walls of the houses were still wet in places. Something blue and shining was tremulously falling through the air to the ground, as if the pure azure were descending from the immeasurable, smiling heavens.

Chattering swallows, flying low, shot through the streets, and their little, metal-blue bodies sparkled in the sunlight. Full-blown, many-colored heads of roses, azaleas