was centred in the towns it was possible to lose sight of
civilisation in a very short time, passing only an occasional farmhouse,
where the women were handling red roots in the courtyard; or a little
boy lying on his elbows on the hillside surrounded by a flock of black
strong-smelling goats. Save for a thread of water at the bottom, the
river was merely a deep channel of dry yellow stones. On the bank grew
those trees which Helen had said it was worth the voyage out merely
to see. April had burst their buds, and they bore large blossoms among
their glossy green leaves with petals of a thick wax-like substance
coloured an exquisite cream or pink or deep crimson. But filled with one
of those unreasonable exultations which start generally from an unknown
cause, and sweep whole countries and skies into their embrace, she
walked without seeing. The night was encroaching upon the day. Her ears
hummed with the tunes she had played the night before; she sang, and
the singing made her walk faster and faster. She did not see distinctly
where she was going, the trees and the landscape appearing only as
masses of green and blue, with an occasional space of differently
coloured sky. Faces of people she had seen last night came before her;
she heard their voices; she stopped singing, and began saying things
over again or saying things differently, or inventing things that might
have been said. The constraint of being among strangers in a long silk
dress made it unusually exciting to stride thus alone. Hewet, Hirst, Mr.
Venning, Miss Allan, the music, the light, the dark trees in the
garden, the dawn,--as she walked they went surging round in her head,
a tumultuous background from which the present moment, with its
opportunity of doing exactly as she liked, sprung more wonderfully vivid
even than the night before.

So she might have walked until she had lost all knowledge of her way,
had it not been for the interruption of a tree, which, although it did
not grow across her path, stopped her as effectively as if the branches
had struck her in the face. It was an ordinary tree, but to her it
appeared so strange that it might have been the only tree in the world.
Dark was the trunk in the middle, and the branches sprang here and
there, leaving jagged intervals of light between them as distinctly as
if it had but that second risen from the ground. Having seen a sight
that would last her for a lifetime, and for a lifetime would preserve