Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/170

 Again the keeper flushed darkly.

“But if you are married——” he charged.

“I am,” answered the other cynically.

Then, looking down the blue, beautiful path, Syson felt his own humiliation. “What right have I to hang on to her?” he thought, bitterly self-contemptuous.

“She knows I’m married and all that,” he said.

“But you keep sending her books,” challenged the keeper.

Syson, silenced, looked at the other man quizzically, half pitying. Then he turned.

“Good day,” he said, and was gone. Now, everything irritated him: the two sallows, one all gold and perfume and murmur, one silver-green and bristly, reminded him, that here he had taught her about pollination. What a fool he was! What god-forsaken folly it all was!

“Ah well,” he said to himself; “the poor devil seems to have a grudge against me. I’ll do my best for him.” He grinned to himself, in a very bad temper.

The farm was less than a hundred yards from the wood’s edge. The wall of trees formed the fourth side to the open quadrangle. The house faced the wood. With tangled emotions, Syson noted the plum blossom falling on the profuse, coloured primroses, which he himself had brought here and set. How they had increased! There were thick tufts of scarlet, and pink, and pale purple primroses under the plum trees. He saw somebody