"I can't do that," Julia said.
"You might try when you get to the top," he suggested. "I will try then; I don't think I could do anything requiring an effort just now."
Julia agreed that she could not either, and they went on up straight before them. It is as easy to climb a sand-hill in one place as in another, provided you stick your feet in the right way, and do not mind getting a good deal of sand in your boots. So they went straight, and at last got clear of the taller trees, and were struggling in thickets of young poplars, and other sinewy things. The sand was firmer, but honeycombed with rabbit holes, and tangled with brambles, and the direction was still upwards, though the growth was so thick, and the ground so bad, that it was often necessary to go a long way round. But in time they were through this too, and really out on the top. Here there was nothing but the Dunes, wide, curving land, that stretched away and away, a tableland of little hollows and hills, like some sea whose waves have been consolidated; near at hand its colours were warm, if not vivid, but in the far distance it grew paler as the vegetation became less and less, till, far away, almost beyond sight, it failed to grey helm grass, and then altogether ceased, leaving the sand bare. Behind lay the trees through which they had come, sloping downwards in banks of cool shadows to the map-like land and the distant town below; away on right and left were other groups of trees, on sides of hills and in rounded hollows, looking small enough from here, but in reality woods of some size. Here there was nothing; but, above, a great blue sky, which seemed very close; and, underfoot, low-growing Dune roses and wild thyme which filled the warm, still air with its matchless scent; nothing but these, and space, and sunshine, and silence.
Julia stopped and looked round, drawing in her breath; she had found what she had come to see—what, perhaps, she had been vaguely wanting to find for a long time.
"Isn't it good?" she said at last. "Did you know there was so much room—so much room anywhere?"
Rawson-Clew looked in the direction she did; he had seen so much of the world, and she had seen so little of it—that is, of the part which is solitary and beautiful. Yet he felt something of her enthusiasm for this sunny, empty place—than which he had seen many finer things every year of his life.
Perhaps this thought occurred to her, for she turned to him rather wistfully: "I expect it does not seem very much to you," she said; "you have seen such a great deal."
"I do not remember to have seen anything quite like this," he answered; "and if I had, what then? One does not get tired of things."
Julia looked at him thoughtfully. "I wonder," she said, "if one would? If one would get weary of it, and want to go back to the other kind of life?"
She was not thinking of Dune country, rather of the simple life it represented to her just then. Rawson-Clew caught the note of seriousness in her tone and reminded her that thought for the past or future was no part of a holiday. "Remember," he said, "you are to-day to emulate dogs and boys."