Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/113

Rh “It is just like Lorna Doone,” she said, as if she enjoyed it.

“But you will let me do it,” said I, referring to the cauterising.

“You make me; but I shall feel—ugh, I daren’t think of it. Get me some of those berries.”

I plucked a few bunches of guelder-rose fruits, transparent, ruby berries. She stroked them softly against her lips and cheek, caressing them. Then she murmured to herself:

“I have always wanted to put red berries in my hair.”

The shawl she had been wearing was thrown across her shoulders, and her head was bare, and her black hair, soft and short and ecstatic, tumbled wildly into loose light curls. She thrust the stalks of the berries under her combs. Her hair was not heavy or long enough to have held them. Then, with the ruby bunches glowing through the black mist of curls, she looked up at me, brightly, with wide eyes. I looked at her, and felt the smile winning into her eyes. Then I turned and dragged a trail of golden-leaved convolvulus from the hedge, and I twisted it into a coronet for her.

“There!” said I, “you’re crowned.”

She put back her head, and the low laughter shook in her throat.

“What!” she asked, putting all the courage and recklessness she had into the question, and in her soul trembling.

“Not Chloë, not Bacchante. You have always got your soul in your eyes, such an earnest, troublesome soul.”