Have you told him where to
go to?"
Burton shook his head.
"I just told him to drive about thirty or forty miles into the
country," he said. "It doesn't matter in what direction, does it? We
may see something that will suit us."
The car, with its splendid easy motion, sped noiselessly through the
suburbs and out into the country. It seemed to Mr. Burton that he must
have dozed. He had been up late the night before, and for several
nights before that. He was a little puffy about the cheeks and his eyes
were not so bright as they had been. He had developed a habit of dozing
off in odd places. When he awoke, he sat up with a start. He had been
dreaming. Surely this was a part of the dream! The car was going very
slowly indeed. On one side of him was a common, with bushes of flaming
gorse and clumps of heather, and little ragged plantations of pine
trees; and on his right, a low, old-fashioned house, a lawn of velvet,
and a great cedar tree; a walled garden with straight, box-bordered
paths, a garden full of old-fashioned flowers whose perfume seemed
suddenly to be tearing at some newly-awakened part of the man. He sat
up. He stared at the little seat among the rose bushes. Surely he was
back again, back again in that strange world, where the flavor of
existence was a different thing, where his head had touched the clouds,
where all the gross cares and pleasures of his everyday life had fallen
away! Was it the perfume of the roses, of the stocks, which had
suddenly appealed to some dormant sense of beauty? Or had he indeed
passed back for a moment into that world concerning which he had
sometimes strange, half doubtful thoughts? He leaned forward, and his
eyes wandered feverishly among the hidden places of the garden.
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