He was feeling this keenly, but unfortunately his mind, instead of grappling with the situation, and forcing his body to act, was engaged in cursing Fate, and the tangled net in which he found himself taken.
Was it his fault that the false news had come just at the psychological moment, the news that had actually thrown Jane into his arms? He kept asking himself this, as he gazed across the dusk-eyed harbor to the hills now becoming dimmed by the twilight.
This last touch of Fate would, if he accepted it without resistance, rob him of the last remnants of honor and all self-respect.
His hand was upon the stakes, he had a moment to decide whether to take them or leave them: to be a thief or an honest man.
Suddenly, as if silence had placed her finger upon their throats, the birds in the orchard ceased their chatter.
The warm day dying seemed to have called all the spirits of beauty from air and earth and sea, to stain the skies above its death-bed with the tints of the ocean and the dawn. Over the tomb of light Color, Light’s firstborn child hovered like some exquisite ephemera whose wings change from beauty to beauty before dissolving for ever in darkness and death.
The silence that had come over the orchard was broken occasionally by little outbursts of squabbling from over-full nests, sounds like the flirting of a fan amongst the leaves, chirrupings that told of differences made up. Then final and complete silence that would last till night woke the owls.
Leslie at the gate suddenly made a gesture as if he were flinging something away, turned on his heel, and came towards the house.
He entered just as Cherry-blossom, with a white flower in her hair, her amber sleeves fallen back and exposing her fore-arms, her body stretched to its fullest height on the tips of her tabis, was in the act of lighting the big hall-lamp. She looked like a little cat stretching herself.
A pang went through his heart. He would never see Cherry-blossom light the big hall-lamp again, never again see Pine-breeze bring in the tea-cups, nor Lotus-bud carrying off Sweetbriar San to his box in the kitchen.