Chapter 3 The Shades o（1 / 2）

Chapter 3 The Shades of Spring（3）

2018-04-15 作者： 外研社编译组

Chapter 3 The Shades of Spring（3）

Www.Pinwenba.Com 吧“I,” she said, very slowly, “I was married the same night as you.”

He looked at her.

“Not legally, of course,” she replied.“But actually.”

“To the keeper?” he said, not knowing what else to say.

She turned to him.

“You thought I could not?” she said.

But the flush was deep in her cheek and throat, for all her assurance.

Still he would not say anything.

“You see” she was making an effort to explain “I had to understand also.”

“And what does it amount to, this UNDERSTANDING?” he asked.

“A very great deal does it not to you?” she replied.“One is free.”

“And you are not disappointed?”

“Far from it!”Her tone was deep and sincere.

“You love him?”

“Yes, I love him.”

“Good!” he said.

This silenced her for a while.

“Here, among his things, I love him,” she said.

His conceit would not let him be silent.

“It needs this setting?” he asked.

“It does,” she cried.“You were always making me to be not myself.”

He laughed shortly.

“But is ita matter of surroundings?” he said.He had considered her all spirit.

“I am like aplant,” she replied.“I can only grow in my own soil.”

They came toa place where the undergrowth shrank away, leaving a bare, brown space, pillared with the brick red and purplish trunks of pine trees.On the fringe, hung the sombre green of elder trees, with flat flowers in bud, and below were bright, unfurling pennons of fern.In the midst of the bare space stood a keeper’s log hut.Pheasant coops were lying about, some occupied by a clucking hen, some empty.

Hilda walkedover the brown pine needles to the hut, took a key from among the eaves, and opened the door.It was a bare wooden place with a carpenter’s bench and form, carpenter’s tools, an axe, snares, straps, some skins pegged down, everything in order.Hilda closed the door.Syson examined the weird flat coats of wild animals, that were pegged down to be cured.She turned some knotch in the side wall, and disclosed a second, small apartment.

“How romantic!” said Syson.

“Yes.He is very curious he has some of a wild animal’s cunning in a nice sense and he is inventive, and thoughtful but not beyond a certain point.”

She pulled back a dark green curtain.

The apartmentwas occupied almost entirely by a large couch of heather and bracken, on which was spread an ample rabbit skin rug.On the floor were patchwork rugs of cat skin, and a red calf skin, while hanging from the wall were other furs.Hilda took down one, which she put on.It was a cloak of rabbit skin and of white fur, with a hood, apparently of the skins of stoats.She laughed at Syson from out of this barbaric mantle, saying:“What do you think of it?”

“Ah !I congratulate you on your man,” he replied.

“And look!” she said.

In a little jar on a shelf were some sprays, frail and white, of the first honeysuckle.

“They will scent the place at night,” she said.

He looked round curiously.

“Where does he come short, then?” he asked.She gazed at him for a few moments.Then, turning aside:

“The stars aren’t the same with him,” she said.“You could make them flash and quiver, and the forget me nots come up at me like phosphorescence.You could make things WONDERFUL.I have found it out it is true.But I have them all for myself, now.”

He laughed, saying:“After all, stars and forget me nots are only luxuries.You ought tomake poetry.”

“Aye,” sheassented.“But I have them all now.”

Again he laughed bitterly at her.

She turned swiftly.He was leaning against the small window of the tiny, obscure room, and was watching her, who stood in the doorway, still cloaked in her mantle.His cap was removed, so she saw his face and head distinctly in the dim room.His black, straight, glossy hair was brushed clean back from his brow.His black eyes were watching her, and his face, that was clear and cream, and perfectly smooth, was flickering.

“We are very different,” she said bitterly.

Again he laughed.

“I see you disapprove of me,” he said.

“I disapprove of what you have become,” she said.

“You think we might” he glanced at the hut “have been like this you and I?”

She shook her head.

“You! no; never!You pluckeda thing and looked at it till you had found out all you wanted to know about it, then you threw it away,” she said.

“Did I?” he asked.“And could your way never have been my way?I supposenot.”

“Why should it?” she said.

“I am a separate being.”

“But surely two people sometimes go the same way,” he said.

“You took me away from myself,” she said.

He knew he had mistaken her, had taken her for something she was not.That was his fault, not hers.

“And did you always know?” he asked.

“No you never let me know.You bullied me.I couldn’t help myself.I was glad when you left me, really.”

“I know youwere,” he said.But his face went paler, almost deathly luminous.

“Yet,” he said, “it was you who sent me the way I have gone.”