"And your teeth gleam like that white pond through the trees."
"You should put that into a poem, Quentin," she said, still laughing, "it sounds funny in prose."
"Prose! Prose!—as if there could be any prose when you are near!"
A copper gleam of sunlight came suddenly from under the rim of a leaden cloud. For a moment it flared on the hedge, making the wet leaves shine. It gave a metallic look to the evening—instead of sweetening the soaked landscape it seemed only to make it sadder, with a harsh, reckless sadness it had not worn in the gloom. Quentin put up his hand and picked one of the shining sprays, to fasten it in Janey's jacket. Whenever he saw beautiful things in the hedges, he wanted to give them to Janey. He never wanted to give her the beautiful things he saw in shops; he did not, like so many men, stare into shop windows, longing to see her in those clothes, those jewels, and great hats like the moon. But if ever he found a sudden splash of bryony in the hedge, or a flush of bloody-twig, or honeysuckle, or nuts, he wanted to pick them for her. When it was May he had often met her in Furnace Wood with his arms full of hawthorn, in June he had brought her dog-roses, in August ripe ears of barley, in September wild-apple boughs; and now in October he picked her sprays of red, sodden leaves. There was a little nut on this spray—he picked it off and cracked it with his teeth, and put the kernel into her mouth. Then suddenly the sunlight faded, and a soft rush of gloom swept up the valley of the hammer ponds.
"Nigel came home last night," said Janet, breaking the silence that had lasted with the sun.
"How is he looking?"
"He's changed, Quentin."
"It's aged him, of course."
"That isn't so terrible—we could have endured that, we'd expected it. The awful thing is that it's made him so childish. Sometimes you'd really think he was a child, by the way he speaks—and goes on."