And as if Mark had never gone, as if that awful thing had never happened
to Dan, as if she had never had those thoughts about her mother, her
hidden happiness came back to her. Unhappiness only pushed it to a longer
rhythm. Nothing could take it away. Anything might bring it: the smell of
the white dust on the road; the wind when it came up out of nowhere and
brushed the young wheat blades, beat the green flats into slopes where
the white light rippled and ran like water, set the green field shaking
and tossing like a green sea; the five elm trees, stiff, ecstatic
dancers, holding out the broken-ladder pattern of their skirts; haunting
rhymes, sudden cadences; the grave "_Ubique_" sounding through the
Beethoven Sonata.
Its thrill of reminiscence passed into the thrill of premonition, of
something about to happen to her.