Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/254

246 “I must ask her quick, while I feel as if everything had gone, and I was ghostish. I think I must sound rather a lunatic.”

He looked at me, and his eyelids hung heavy over his eyes as if he had been drinking, or as if he were tired.

“Is she at home?” he said.

“No, she’s gone to Nottingham. She’ll be home before dark.”

“I’ll see her then. Can you smell violets?”

I replied that I could not. He was sure that he could, and he seemed uneasy till he had justified the sensation. So he arose, very leisurely, and went along the bank, looking closely for the flowers.

“I knew I could. White ones!”

He sat down and picked three flowers, and held them to his nostrils, and inhaled their fragrance. Then he put them to his mouth, and I saw his strong white teeth crush them. He chewed them for a while without speaking; then he spat them out, and gathered more.

“They remind me of her too,” he said, and he twisted a piece of honey-suckle stem round the bunch and handed it to me.

“A white violet, is she?” I smiled.

“Give them to her, and tell her to come and meet me just when it’s getting dark in the wood.”

“But if she won’t?”

“She will.”

“If she’s not at home?”

“Come and tell me.”

He lay down again with his head among the green violet leaves, saying: