Mary went slowly up the lane between the garden wall and the thorn hedge.
The air, streaming towards her from the flat fields, had the tang of
cold, glittering water; the sweet, grassy smell of the green corn blades
swam on it. The young thorn leaves smelt of almonds and of their own
bitter green.
The five trees stood up, thin and black, in an archway of golden white
fire. The green of their young leaves hung about them like an emanation.
A skylark swung himself up, a small grey ball, spinning over the tree
tops to the arch of the sunset. His song pierced and shook, like the
golden white light. With each throb of his wings he shrank, smaller and
greyer, a moth, a midge, whirling in the luminous air. A grey ball
dropped spinning down.
By the gate of the field her sudden, secret happiness came to her.
She could never tell when it was coming, nor what it would come from. It
had something to do with the trees standing up in the golden white light.
It had come before with a certain sharp white light flooding the fields,
flooding the room.
It had happened so often that she received it now with a shock of
recognition; and when it was over she wanted it to happen again. She
would go back and back to the places where it had come, looking for it,
thinking that any minute it might happen again. But it never came twice
to the same place in the same way.
Catty was calling to her from the bottom of the lane. She stood still by
the gate, not heeding Catty, holding her happiness. When she had turned
from the quiet fields it would be gone.