He had loved at once that cool pale face, the abundance of her strange hair as light as the autumn’s clustered bronze, her lilac dress and all the sweetness about her like a bush of lilies. How they had laughed at the two old peasants whom they had overheard gabbling of trifles like sickness and appetite!
“There’s a lot of nature in a parsnip,” said one, a fat person of the kind that swells grossly when stung by a bee, “a lot of nature when it’s young, but when it’s old it’s like everything else.”
“True it is.”
“And I’m very fond of vegetables, yes, and I’m very fond of bread.”
“Come out with me,” whispered Cassia to Filip, and they walked out in the blackness of midnight into what must have been a garden.
“Cool it is here,” she said, “and quiet, but too dark even to see your face—can you see mine?”
“The moon will not rise until after dawn,” said he, “it will be white in the sky when the starlings whistle in your chimney.”
They walked silently and warily about until they felt the chill of the air. A dull echo of the music came to them through the walls, then stopped, and they heard the bark of a fox away in the woods.
“You are cold,” he whispered, touching her bare neck with timid fingers. “Quite, quite cold,” drawing his hand tenderly over the curves of her chin and face. “Let us go in,” he said, moving with discretion from the rapture he desired. “We will come out again,” said Cassia.
But within the room the ball was just at an end, the musicians were packing up their instruments and the dancers were flocking out and homewards, or to the buffet which was on a platform at one end of the room. The two old peasants were there, munching hugely.