Ursula and Anton Skrebensky walked along the ridge of the canal between. The berries on the hedges were crimson and bright red, above the leaves. The glow of evening and the wheeling of the solitary pee-wit and the faint cry of the birds came to meet the shuffling noise of the pits, the dark, fuming stress of the town opposite, and they two walked the blue strip of water-way, the ribbon of sky between.
He was looking, Ursula thought, very beautiful, because of a flush of sunburn on his hands and face. He was telling her how he had learned to shoe horses and select cattle fit for killing.
“Do you like to be a soldier?” she asked.
“I am not exactly a soldier,” he replied.
“But you only do things for wars,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Would you like to go to war?”
“I? Well, it would be exciting. If there were a war I would want to go.”
A strange, distracted feeling came over her, a sense of potent unrealities.
“Why would you want to go?”