The air smelled strong and sweet, as though it had passed over leagues
of grass.
"The Downs!" she thought; "I must have been asleep!"
In sudden terror, she looked round for Miltoun. But he was still there,
exactly as before, leaning back rigid in his corner of the cab, with
staring eyes, and no other signs of life. And still only half awake,
like a great warm sleepy child startled out of too deep slumber, she
clutched, and clung to him. The thought that he had been sitting like
that, with his spirit far away, all the time that she had been betraying
her watch in sleep, was dreadful. But to her embrace there was no
response, and awake indeed now, ashamed, sore, Barbara released him, and
turned her face to the air.
Out there, two thin, dense-black, long clouds, shaped like the wings
of a hawk, had joined themselves together, so that nothing of the moon
showed but a living brightness imprisoned, like the eyes and life of a
bird, between those swift sweeps of darkness. This great uncanny spirit,
brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan grass, seemed
waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and devour, all that
intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up plains of freedom. Barbara
almost expected to hear coming from it the lost whistle of the buzzard
hawks. And her dream came back to her.
Pages:
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361