"
After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They
wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink
willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the
gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen
trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all
washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth,
and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the
hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the
gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines
stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a
moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called
or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness--as it seemed to Marcia, a
Sabbath dreariness--held the scene.
Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately.
She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was
conscious of misgiving as at luncheon.
"Darling!--is there anything wrong--anything that troubles you?" he said,
anxiously.
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