He looked grimly ahead of him and was slow in replying.
“That is the principle I should act upon if I did any work,” he said at length.
Esmé lifted wondering eyes to his face.
“It must be a great responsibility to be independent of work,” she said.
Hallam laughed suddenly.
“Do you really think so? Most people would reverse that opinion. The weight of it does not press on me unduly.”
He flicked at the dust of the road with his stick and at the grass which grew beside the road, and was silent for a space. When he spoke again it was on an entirely different subject.
They were swinging along down the road at a smart pace, and with every yard of ground they covered the aspect of the land changed, became more luxuriant in its growth, and altogether more rugged and assertive. The sky was flushed with a soft pink like the flush on the face of a child newly wakened from sleep. Before them as they walked the mist rolled back, a gradually thinning vapour dispersing before the warmth of the coming day, revealing with a startling unexpectedness in its reluctant retreat the wonder of contrasting colour, the beauty of the curving road with the shadows of the trees across it, and the great green silences stretching above and below; the silence of the heights, and the more secretive silence of the hidden places in the furtive darkness of the gorge.
The rose pink in the sky deepened, spread itself warmly over the blue expanse, reflected warmly upon the silent, neutral tinted world; changed the face of the land as it changed the face of the sky; brightening and intensifying the colour in the grass, in the leaves of the trees, painting the flowers wonderfully; transforming everything with the glow and warmth of life. The world threw off its lethargy of slumber and lifted its face wakefully to the flood of sunlight which broke through the rose and azure in a flash of gold.
Esmé stood transfixed, with eyes turned to the sunrise. She felt the warmth of the sun on her face, on her hands, on her body. It was like being gripped in a warm embrace, startling and a little disconcerting by its very suddenness. The gold of it poured over her like an amber flame. The man, standing beside her, watched the sun-bathed, radiant figure, and saw the wonder in her eyes, and remained silent, attentive, marking nothing of the glory in the changing heavens, seeing only the startled gladness in a girl’s sweet face, and the glowing brightness of her figure against the sunlit dust of the road.