"Philippa, you little tyrant, do you mean to refuse me the Lys?"
"Come down to the river and look her over," she said, drawing him away from the balustrade. "And on the way you may get the pole from the garage."
He was inclined to demur, but she had her way; and ten minutes later they were walking across the fields, he with the pole across his shoulder, she moving lightly and happily beside him, her hair in two braids and the velvet strings of the bonnet fluttering under her rounded chin.
The Ausone road lay white and deserted; the last fugitive from the north had passed. Nor were there any more skiffs or laden boats on the river, nor any signs of life on the quarry road. All was still and sunny and silent; the Récollette slipped along, clear and silvery, between green banks; to the east the calm blue hills stretched away vague with haze; swallows soared and dipped, starring the glass of the stream as though rising fish were breaking its serene surface. But the still air and cobalt sky were heavy with the cannonade, making the stillness of the sun-drenched world almost uncanny.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Philippa, curled up in the punt, had fashioned for herself a chaplet of river lilies. The white blossoms wreathing the black velvet bonnet à quartiers, and a huge bouquet of the lovely flowers which she carried in her hand gave a bridal aspect to the affair, heightened presently when she began to festoon the gunwales with lilies and scented rushes from the sedge, as they slipped along inshore to avoid the stronger current of midstream.
The air vibrated and hummed with the unbroken rolling of the bombardment; there was not a cloud in the calm sky; no birds sang and few, except the darting swallows of the Récollette, were on the wing at all; but everywhere dragon flies glittered, level-winged, poised in mid-air, or darted and hovered among the reeds with a faint, fairy-like clash of gauzy wings.
The sound of the cannonade grew so much more distinct as they drew near the environs of Ausone that, to Warner, the increase in volume and the jar of concussion seemed scarcely due alone to their approach. Rather it appeared as though the distant reverberations were very gradually rolling toward them; and before they had poled within sight of the outskirts of the town Warner said to Philippa:
"It sounds to me as though the whole business were miles nearer than the mere distance we have come. And that is not an encouraging suggestion, either."
"Could it be the wind which is carrying it toward us?"