She was breathless and strangely happy when she reached the road. She
was pleased at her capacity for running and her dull trouble seemed to
have lifted, to have risen from her mind and gone off to join the
clouds. She laughed a little and dropped down on a stone, and above
the hurried beating of her heart she heard fainter, more despairing,
the cry of the gipsy child. 'It isn't cooked yet,' she thought. There
was a deeper silence, and she imagined a horrible dipping into the
pot, a loud and ravenous eating.
For a few minutes she forgot her quest, conscious of a happy loss of
personality in this solitary place, feeling herself merged into the
night, looking up at the patrolling clouds which, having lost her, had
moved on. She sat in the darkness until she heard, very far off, the
beat of a horse's hoofs, the rumble of wheels. She remembered then
that she had to find Henrietta. The road towards Sales Hall was
nowhere blurred by a figure, there was no sound of footsteps, and the
noise of the approaching horse and cart was distantly symbolic of
human activity and home-faring; it made her think of lights and food.
She looked back, and not many yards away two figures stepped from the
sheltering trees by the roadside. On the whiteness of the road they
were clear and unmistakable. Their arms were outstretched and their
hands were joined and, as she looked, the two forms became one,
separated and parted. The feet of Henrietta went tapping down the road
and for a moment Francis stood and watched her.
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