"But this," she said, at a certain point, "is where we were yesterday!"
"This is where the doctor was yesterday," her father said, behind his
cigar.
"And wasn't I with you?" she asked Lanfear.
He said, playfully: "To-day you are. I mustn't be selfish and have you
every day."
"Ah, you are laughing at me; but I know I was here yesterday."
Her father set his lips in patience, and Lanfear did not insist.
They had halted at this point because, across a wide valley on the
shoulder of an approaching height, the ruined village of Possana showed,
and lower down and nearer the seat the new town which its people had
built when they escaped from the destruction of their world-old home.
World-old it all was, with reference to the human life of it; but the
spring-time was immortally young in the landscape. Over the expanses of
green and brown fields, and hovering about the gray and white cottages,
was a mist of peach and cherry blossoms. Above these the hoar olives
thickened, and the vines climbed from terrace to terrace. The valley
narrowed inland, and ceased in the embrace of the hills drawing
mysteriously together in the distances.
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