-she could no longer bear the passionate pain
of all the long-lost sweetness, but flinging herself downward, sobbed
with the ecstasy of an exile's memories.

The hell in which she had dwelt had denied them to her for so long.

"Ah God!" she thought, "I know now--one cannot be utterly wretched
whilst one has still the air and the light and the winds of the sky."

And she arose, calmer, and went on her way; wondering, even in that
hour, why men and women trod the daily measures of their lives with
their eyes downward and their ears choked with the dust; hearkening so
little to the sound of the breeze in the grasses, looking so little to
the passage of the clouds against the sun.

* * *

The ground ascended as it stretched seaward, but on it there were only
wide dull fields of colza or of grass lying, sickly and burning, under
the fire of the late afternoon sun.

The slope was too gradual to break their monotony.

Above them was the cloudless weary blue; below them was the faint
parched green; other colour there was none; one little dusky panting
bird flew by pursued by a kite; that was the only change.

She asked him no questions; she walked mutely and patiently by his side;
she hated the dull heat, the colourless waste, the hard scorch of the
air, the dreary changelessness of the scene. But she did not say so. He
had chosen to come to them.

A league onward the fields were merged into a heath, uncultivated and
covered with short prickly furze; on the brown earth between the stunted
bushes a few goats were cropping the burnt-up grasses. Here the slope
grew sharper, and the earth seemed to rise up between the sky and them,
steep and barren as a house-roof.

Once he asked her--

"Are you tired?"

She shook her head.

Her feet ached, and her heart throbbed; her limbs were heavy like lead
in the heat and the toil. But she did not tell him so. She would have
dropped dead from exhaustion rather than have confessed to him any
weakness.

He took the denial as it was given, and pressed onward up the ascent.

The sun was slanting towards the west; the skies seemed like brass; the
air was sharp, yet scorching; the dull brown earth still rose up before
them like a wall; they climbed it slowly and painfully, their hands and
their teeth filled with its dust, which drifted in a cloud before them.
He bade her close her eyes, and she obeyed him. He stretched his arm out
and drew her after him up the a