She had never known what it was to sail as on the wings of the wind along
broad roads, with yellow wheat-lands, and green hedges, and wayside
trees, and little villages, and reedy canal water, all flying by her to
the sing-song of the joyous bells.
"Oh, how good it is to live!" she cried, clapping her hands in a very
ecstasy, as the clear morning broadened into gold and the west wind rose
and blew from the sands by the sea.
"Yes--it is good--if one did not tire so soon," said he, watching her
with a listless pleasure.
But she did not hear; she was beyond the reach of any power to sadden
her; she was watching the white oxen that stood on the purple brow of
the just reapen lands, and the rosy clouds that blew like a shower of
apple-blossoms across the sky to the south.
There was a sad darkling Calvary on the edge of the harvest-field that
looked black against the blue sky; its shadow fell across the road, but
she did not see it: she was looking at the sun.
There is not much change in the great Soignies woods. They are aisles on
aisles of beautiful green trees, crossing and recrossing; tunnels of dark
foliage that look endless; long avenues of beech, of oak, of elm, or of
fir, with the bracken and the brushwood growing dense between; a
delicious forest growth everywhere, shady even at noon, and by a little
past midday dusky as evening; with the forest fragrance, sweet and dewy,
all about, and under the fern the stirring of wild game, and the white
gleam of little rabbits, and the sound of the wings of birds.
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