Page 367 - sons-and-lovers

‘I thought you wanted a funeral,’ he said, ill at ease.
Clara laughed strangely, and rose, picking the cowslips
from her hair. She took up her hat and pinned it on. One
flower had remained tangled in her hair. He saw, but would
not tell her. He gathered up the flowers he had sprinkled
over her.
At the edge of the wood the bluebells had flowed over
into the field and stood there like flood-water. But they were
fading now. Clara strayed up to them. He wandered after
her. The bluebells pleased him.
‘Look how they’ve come out of the wood!’ he said.
Then she turned with a flash of warmth and of grati-
tude.
‘Yes,’ she smiled.
His blood beat up.
‘It makes me think of the wild men of the woods, how
terrified they would be when they got breast to breast with
the open space.’
‘Do you think they were?’ she asked.
‘I wonder which was more frightened among old tribes—
those bursting out of their darkness of woods upon all the
space of light, or those from the open tiptoeing into the for-
ests.’
‘I should think the second,’ she answered.
‘Yes, you DO feel like one of the open space sort, trying
to force yourself into the dark, don’t you?’
‘How should I know?’ she answered queerly.
The conversation ended there.
The evening was deepening over the earth. Already the

Sons and Lovers