Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/327

Rh “Why can’t you?” he asked.

“You know we can’t—you know as well as I do,” she replied, and her whole soul challenged him. “We have to consider things” she added. He dropped his head. He was afraid to make the struggle, to rouse himself to decide the question for her. She turned away, and went kicking through the flowers. He picked up the blossoms she had left by the nest—they were still warm from her hands—and followed her. She walked on towards the end of the field, the long strands of her white scarf running before her. Then she leaned back to the wind, while he caught her up.

“Don’t you want your flowers?” he asked humbly.

“No, thanks—they’d be dead before I got home—throw them away, you look absurd with a posy.”

He did as he was bidden. They came near the hedge. A crab-apple tree blossomed up among the blue.

“You may get me a bit of that blossom,” said she, and suddenly added—“no, I can reach it myself,” whereupon she stretched upward and pulled several sprigs of the pink and white, and put it in her dress.

“Isn’t it pretty?” she said, and she began to laugh ironically, pointing to the flowers—“pretty, pink-cheeked petals, and stamens like yellow hair, and buds like lips promising something nice”—she stopped, and looked at him, flickering with a smile. Then she pointed to the ovary beneath the flower, and said: “Result: Crab-apples!”

She continued to look at him, and to smile. He said nothing. So they went on to where they could climb the fence into the spinney. She climbed to