He felt a pang for her innocent self-betrayal, but he retorted gravely, "That is your fault for not being contented with a good civilised wire-mattress."
She laughed out loud. "How nice of you to talk nonsense! It is exactly like old times; exactly!" she cried. "Ned! do you think we were made to forget? I don't."
"Some things," he said soberly, "are best forgotten."
"Not many," she replied cheerfully. "Sometimes, Ned, I seem to get at the meaning of so much by remembering, and then I see how all these little lives of ours work into one big whole; and then--and then." She was silent, her eyes still upon the clouds.
"If her Majesty will deign to look upon this poor world," said Ned Blackborough after quite a long while, "she will see primroses."
They were beyond the grime. The skies were blue, the trees, the grass were green, and far away the distant hills showed purple through the blossoming apple orchards.
What need was there for more?
Not once, not twice, but many times that day, as the car sped almost noiselessly through lanes and past homesteads and fields where the lambs lay white like little clouds dropped from heaven, Ned told himself joyfully that this was but the beginning of an end which would never come.
"Why are you putting on your goggles?" she asked, as, by the low road round the coast--for the straight hilly pitch over the head of the valley was too bad for the motor--they came within measurable distance of Dinas.
"There are a lot of slate spiculæ on the road," he replied coolly, "and one got into my eye once. You had better put on a veil too. I brought one on purpose."