Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/328

320 the top rail, holding by an oak bough. Then she let him lift her down bodily.

“Ah!” she said, “you like to show me how strong you are—a veritable Samson!”—she mocked, although she had invited him with her eyes to take her in his arms.

We were entering the spinney of black poplar. In the hedge was an elm tree, with myriads of dark dots pointed against the bright sky, myriads of clusters of flaky green fruit.

“Look at that elm,” she said, “you’d think it was in full leaf, wouldn’t you? Do you know why it’s so prolific?”

“No,” he said, with a curious questioning drawl of the monosyllable.

“It’s casting it’s bread upon the winds—no, it is dying, so it puts out all its strength and loads its boughs with the last fruit. It’ll be dead next year. If you’re here then, come and see. Look at the ivy, the suave smooth ivy, with its fingers in the trees’ throat. Trees know how to die, you see—we don’t.”

With her whimsical moods she tormented him. She was at the bottom a seething confusion of emotion, and she wanted to make him likewise.

“If we were trees with ivy—instead of being fine humans with free active life—we should hug our thinning lives, shouldn’t we?”

“I suppose we should.”

“You, for instance—fancy your sacrificing yourself—for the next generation—that reminds you of Schopenhauer, doesn’t it?—for the next generation, or love, or anything!”

He did not answer her; she was too swift for him.