"
Refusing the company of a groom, she made her way towards the stretch of
high moor where she had ridden with Courtier a year ago. Here over the
short, as yet unflowering, heather, there was a mile or more of level
galloping ground. She mounted steadily, and her spirit rode, as it were,
before her, longing to get up there among the peewits and curlew, to
feel the crisp, peaty earth slip away under her, and the wind drive
in her face, under that deep blue sky. Carried by this warm-blooded
sweetheart of hers, ready to jump out of his smooth hide with pleasure,
snuffling and sneezing in sheer joy, whose eye she could see straying
round to catch a glimpse of her intentions, from whose lips she could
hear issuing the sweet bitt-music, whose vagaries even seemed designed
to startle from her a closer embracing--she was filled with a sort of
delicious impatience with everything that was not this perfect communing
with vigour.
Reaching the top, she put him into a gallop. With the wind furiously
assailing her face and throat, every muscle crisped; and all her blood
tingling--this was a very ecstasy of motion!
She reined in at the cairn whence she and Courtier had looked down at
the herds of ponies. It was the merest memory now, vague and a little
sweet, like the remembrance of some exceptional Spring day, when trees
seem to flower before your eyes, and in sheer wantonness exhale a scent
of lemons.
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