"At the notion of your begging my pardon. If you had done your duty as a
pillar of the state and a landed proprietress you ought to have summoned
me for trespass when I barged through your woods the other day. It was
disgraceful of me--inexcusable."
She looked at me, her head against the tree trunk--long and steadfastly--
this woman who could see the naked soul.
"How curious," she half whispered. "How very curious."
"Why, what have I done?"
"You don't understand ... and yet you understood about the Colours. Don't
you understand?"
She spoke with a passion that nothing had justified, and I faced her
bewilderedly as she rose. The children had gathered themselves in a
roundel behind a bramble bush. One sleek head bent over something smaller,
and the set of the little shoulders told me that fingers were on lips.
They, too, had some child's tremendous secret. I alone was hopelessly
astray there in the broad sunlight.
"No," I said, and shook my head as though the dead eyes could note.
"Whatever it is, I don't understand yet. Perhaps I shall later--if you'll
let me come again."
"You will come again," she answered. "You will surely come again and walk
in the wood."
"Perhaps the children will know me well enough by that time to let me play
with them--as a favour. You know what children are like."
"It isn't a matter of favour but of right," she replied, and while I
wondered what she meant, a dishevelled woman plunged round the bend of the
road, loose-haired, purple, almost lowing with agony as she ran.
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