Pagina 149 di 490

She laughed and took his arm. "You dear old Jim, you talk as if

you were a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself. Then

you will know what it is. Don't look so sulky. Surely you should

be glad to think that, though you are going away, you leave me

happier than I have ever been before. Life has been hard for us

both, terribly hard and difficult. But it will be different now.

You are going to a new world, and I have found one. Here are two

chairs; let us sit down and see the smart people go by."

They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulip-beds

across the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white

dust-tremulous cloud of orris-root it seemed-hung in the panting

air. The brightly coloured parasols danced and dipped like

monstrous butterflies.