Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/169

 eyes, apparently thinking back, and trying to make things out.

“Why, didn’t you know?” asked Syson.

“No, I didn’t,” said the other sulkily.

There was silence for a moment.

“Ah well!” said Syson, “I will go on. I suppose I may.” The keeper stood in silent opposition. The two men hesitated in the open, grassy space, set round with small sheaves of sturdy bluebells; a little open platform on the brow of the hill. Syson took a few indecisive steps forward, then stopped.

“I say, how beautiful!” he cried.

He had come in full view of the downslope. The wide path ran from his feet like a river, and it was full of bluebells, save for a green winding thread down the centre, where the keeper walked. Like a stream the path opened into azure shallows at the levels, and there were pools of bluebells, with still the green thread winding through, like a thin current of ice-water through blue lakes. And from under the twig-purple of the bushes swam the shadowed blue, as if the flowers lay in flood water over the woodland.

“Ah, isn’t it lovely!” Syson exclaimed; this was his past, the country he had abandoned, and it hurt him to see it so beautiful. Wood-pigeons cooed overhead, and the air was full of the brightness of birds singing.

“If you’re married, what do you keep writing to her for, and sending her poetry books and things?” asked the keeper. Syson stared at him, taken aback and humiliated. Then he began to smile.

“Well,” he said, “I did not know about you ”