She waited, swayed back against a tree trunk, the flowers a dead weight over her arm. She held them gently, lest a rough movement should wake the horror they hid. With what was left of sanity she prayed.
The trees encircled her, watching. From far away there came once more a sound of footsteps.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Roger set out at a quick pace for the wood, the basket rattling lightly on his arm; but the track of Alwynne's shoes was lost in the deep grass of the paddock, and he hesitated, wondering where he should look for her. Followed a cupboard-love scene with Nicholas Nye, who accompanied him to the boundary of his kingdom, snuffling windily in the empty bodge. He brayed disgustedly when Roger left him, his ancient lips curling backward over yellow stumps, in a smile that was an insult. He had the air of knowing exactly where Roger was going, and of being leeringly amused.
For ten minutes Roger wandered about, starting aside from the pathway half a dozen times, deceived by a swaying branch, or the deceptive pink and white of distant birch bark. He tramped on into the thickness of the wood, till at last, through a thinning of trees, a hundred yards to his left, he caught a glimpse of gold, that could only, he told himself, be Alwynne's hair. He frowned. It was just like the girl to go floundering into the only boggy bit of the wood, when two thirds were drained and dry, and thick with flowers.... It was sheer spirit of contradiction! She would catch cold of course; and he would, not to mince matters, be stunk out with eucalyptus for the next ten days ... and The Dears would fuss ... he knew them! His fastidiousness was always revolted by a parade of handkerchiefs and bleared eyes. He was accustomed to insist that disease was as disgraceful as dirt: and that there was not a pin to choose between Dartmoor and the London Hospital as harbourage for criminals. But he could always dismount from his hobby-horse for any case of suffering that came his way. He could give his time, his money, or his tenderness, with a matter-of-course promptitude that relieved all but a tender-skinned few of any belief that they had reason to be grateful to him.
Roger, his eye on the distant halo, crashed through the undergrowth at a great rate, emerging into a little natural clearing, to find Alwynne facing him, a bare half-dozen yards away.
The full sight of her pulled him up short.
She was standing—lying upright, rather, for she seemed incapable of self-support—flattened against a big grey oak. One arm, flung backwards, clutched and scrabbled at the bark; the other, crooked shelteringly, supported a mass of bluebells. Her face was grey, her mouth half open, her eyes wide and pale. Very obviously she did not see him.