" By his coming she knew that
he was saying all he ever meant to say about that dark incident. And
sympathizing completely with a reticence which she herself felt to
be the only possible way out for both of them, Barbara looked at him
gratefully, took the note and said: "All right!"
Then, after glancing once or twice round the room, Miltoun went away.
He left her restless, divested of the cloak 'of course,' in a strange
mood of questioning, ready as it were for the sight of the magpie wings
of Life, and to hear their quick flutterings. Talk jarred on her that
morning, with its sameness and attachment to the facts of the present
and the future, its essential concern with the world as it was-she
avoided all companionship on her ride. She wanted to be told of things
that were not, yet might be, to peep behind the curtain, and see the
very spirit of mortal happenings escaped from prison. And this was all
so unusual with Barbara, whose body was too perfect, too sanely governed
by the flow of her blood not to revel in the moment and the things
thereof. She knew it was unusual. After her ride she avoided lunch, and
walked out into the lanes. But about two o'clock, feeling very hungry,
she went into a farmhouse, and asked for milk. There, in the kitchen,
like young jackdaws in a row with their mouths a little open, were the
three farm boys, seated on a bench gripped to the alcove of the great
fire-way, munching bread and cheese.
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