“I’ve known you sentimental, Fiesole.”
Her lips trembled, and her body stiffened. “And you punished me for it.”
“You have a woman’s memory.”
“Odd, seeing I’m a woman. Who’s going to crank that engine? Am I, or are you?”
We swung on through the bare bleak country with masked faces. She sat a little apart from me, her knees crossed and her hands clasped about them. Did I glance at her, she turned petulantly in the opposite direction. I cursed myself. I was almost angry with her. What was her plan? Had she given me the privileges of dearness to her simply that she might thwart and taunt me? How could I teach her to forget? How could I teach myself to forget? At the back of my mind I loved her the more because of her perversity.
We came to a cross-road. She touched me on the arm; we swerved into it. Far down the white stretch I saw a speck, which resolved itself into a man and woman, traveling away from us with their backs towards us. The man wore the blue blouse and wide, baggy trousers of a peasant; his feet were shod in sabots. The woman was clad in a coarse, loose dress, like a sack drawn over her and tied about the middle; it was neutral in tone, being aged by weather. Her figure was shapeless—almost animal in its ponderous patience and breadth. Her hair was flaxen from exposure. They plodded through the bleak expanse with heads bowed, bodies huddled, and arms encircling. Every few paces they halted; we saw the gleam of their faces as they clung lip to lip in hasty ecstasy.
The wind was blowing from them towards us; they were unaware of us. I had my hand on the horn, when Fiesole clutched me.
“Don’t. They’ve nothing in the world but this moment. God knows what lies before them!”
We followed them at a distance. The symbolism of their silent figures awed us: overhead, the soundless battle of high-flying clouds; beneath, the gray vacancy with springtime stirring; around, the dun, unheeding earth; through the bareness the white road sweeping on unhurrying toward the land of sunsets; traveling along it a man and woman, for the time forgetful of their poverty, the focus-point of responsive passion. They had nothing but this moment.
“And what have we?” I questioned.