It was outside the garden altogether, behind the village street. A sunk lane under high hedges led to a solitary farm. One of the fields on the way to it overlooked a sheltered copse of silver birches. Julian was stretched at full length under the hedge, looking down into the wood; his crutches lay beside him. Under the silver birches the ground was as blue as if the sky had sprung up out of the earth. There was no space at all for anything but bluebells. Far away in the valley a cuckoo called its first compelling notes.
Julian's face was set. He looked through the silver-and-blue copse as if it were not there; his eyes held a tortured universe.
Stella would have slipped away from him unseen, but his voice checked her.
"Is that you, Stella?" he asked quietly. "Won't you come and sit down here and look at this damned pretty world with me?"
His voice was startlingly bitter; it was the first time that he had used her name.
She came to him quickly, and sat down beside him, motionless and alert. She knew that this was yet another Julian, and an instinct told her that this was probably the real one.
He, too, said nothing for a moment; then he began to speak with little jerks between his sentences.
"What do you suppose," he said, "is the idea? You know what I mean? You saw the papers this morning? Have you ever seen a man gassed? I did once, in Wales—a mine explosion. We got to the fellows. One of them was dead, and one was mad, and one would have liked to be mad or dead. I rather gather that about two or three thousand Canadians were gassed near Ypres. They stood, you know,—stood as long as you can stand,—gassed. I always thought that phrase, 'died at their posts,' misleading. There aren't any posts, for one thing, and, then, dying—well, you don't die quickly from gas. If you're fairly strong, it's a solid performance, and takes at the least several hours.
"I beg your pardon. I oughtn't to talk to you like that. Please forgive me for being such a brute. On such a lovely morning, too! Are there any new bulbs up? I ought to be ashamed of myself."
"Julian—" said Stella.