The car turned out of the drive and took the dusty road.
Almost she forgot to look back to see the last of those red walls.
‘I’m saying good-bye to it, Martin. Ugh! I hate it. I love it.’
The poplars seemed to grow all in a moment and hide it. It was gone.
‘Well, Martin, how are you? What’s been happening to everybody? How are they all?’
She was slipping back, she was slipping back.
They left Cambridge behind them, and she tried to recall it, to make it come before her eyes, and could not. The dream of wake, the dream of sleep—which had it been?
She wondered if she would ever remember it again.
Yesterday Martin had been standing with her under the cherry tree.
Now he was telling her about his home in Hampshire. He acted as estate agent for his mother now that his father was dead. She must really come and stay with them and meet his mother. He was perfectly happy farming his own land: he never wanted to do anything else. He was improving the fishing and shooting: they had just bought a bit of land they had been after for two years: half a mile more river and a biggish wood. Forestry was the most fascinating subject: he was going to take it up more seriously. Martin’s life seemed very happy, very ordered, very clear and useful. He knew what he wanted.