r lover and
herself setting forth silently along the river wall where they had
first met; sitting down, still silent, beneath the poplar-tree where the
little bodies of the chafers had lain strewn in the Spring. To see the
trees changing from black to grey, from grey to green, and in the dark
sky long white lines of cloud, lighting to the south like birds; and,
very far away, rosy peaks watching the awakening of the earth. And now
once again, after all that time, she felt her spirit shrink away from
his; as it had shrunk in that hour, when she had seemed hateful to
herself. She remembered the words she had spoken: "I have no heart left.
You've torn it in two between you. Love is all self--I wanted him to
die." She remembered too the raindrops on the vines like a million tiny
lamps, and the throstle that began singing. Then, as dreams die out into
warm nothingness, recollection vanished, and the smile came back to her
lips.

She took out a letter.

"....O Chris! We are really coming; I seem to be always telling it to
myself, and I have told Scruff many times, but he does not care, because
he is getting old. Miss Naylor says we shall arrive for breakfast, and
that we shall be hungry, but perhaps she will not be very hungry, if it
is rough. Papa said to me: 'Je serai inconsolable, mais inconsolable!'
But I think he will not be, because he is going to Vienna. When we are
come, there will be nobody at Villa Rubein; Aunt Constance has gone a
fortnight ago to Florence. There is a young man at her hotel; she says
he will be one of the greatest playwriters in England, and she sent me a
play of his to read; it was only a little about love, I did not like it
very much.... O Chris! I think I shall cry when I see you. As I am quite
grown up, Miss Naylor is not to come back with me; sometimes she is sad,
but she will be glad to see you, Chris. She seems always sadder when it
is Spring. Today I walked along the wall; the little green balls of wool
are growing on the poplars already, and I saw one chafer; it will not be
long before the cherry blossom comes; and I felt so funny, sad and happy
together, and once I thought that I had wings and could fly away up the
valley to Meran--but I had none, so I sat on the bench where we sat the
day we took the pictures, and I thought and thought; there was nothing
came to me in my thoughts, but all was sweet and a little noisy, and
rather sad; it was like the buzzing of the chafer, in my head; an