“Is she very pretty?”
This time he did not go red, such was the disturbance that question made in him. If he said: “Yes,” it was like letting the world know his adoration; but to say anything less would be horrible, disloyal. So he did say: “Yes,” listening hard to the tone of his own voice.
“I thought she was. Do you like her very much?” Again he struggled with that thing in his throat, and again said: “Yes.”
He wanted to hate this girl, yet somehow could not—she looked so soft and confiding. She was staring before her now, her lips still just parted, so evidently THAT had not been because of Bolero's pulling; they were pretty all the same, and so was her short, straight little nose, and her chin, and she was awfully fair. His thoughts flew back to that other face—so splendid, so full of life. Suddenly he found himself unable to picture it—for the first time since he had started on his journey it would not come before him.
“Oh! Look!”
Her hand was pulling at his arm. There in the field over the hedge a buzzard hawk was dropping like a stone.
“Oh, Mark! Oh! Oh! It's got it!”
She was covering her face with both her hands, and the hawk, with a young rabbit in its claws, was sailing up again. It looked so beautiful that he did not somehow feel sorry for the rabbit; but he wanted to stroke and comfort her, and said:
“It's all right, Sylvia; it really is. The rabbit's dead already, you know. And it's quite natural.”
She took her hands away from a face that looked just as if she were going to cry.