The sun struck a vivid note with the
red and the saffron they wore, turned them into an ornamentation, in the
profuse Oriental taste, of the empty expanse. There was the completest
freedom in the wide, tree-dotted spaces round which the city gathered
her shops and her palaces, the fullest invitation to disburden any
heaviness that might oppress, to give the wings of words to any joy that
might rebel in prison. The advantage of the intimacy of the landau for
purposes of observation was so obvious that one imagines Alicia must
have been aware of it, though, as a matter of fact, when she told
Lindsay she did not look at him at all, but beyond the trees of the Eden
Gardens, where the yellow dome of the Post Office swelled against the
morning sky, and so lost it.
He heard without exclamation, but stopped her now and then with a
question. On what day precisely? And how long? And afterward? The yellow
dome was her anchor; she turned her head a little, as the road trended
the other way, to keep her eyes upon it. There was an endless going
round of wheels, and trees passed them in mechanical succession; a tree,
and another tree; some of them had flowers on them. When he broke the
silence afterward, she started as if in apprehension, but it was only to
say something that anybody might have said, about the self-sacrificing
energy of the organisation to which Miss Filbert belonged.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225