"Well, how does married life go? It seems to me you're a little
pale," he said laughing.
In the evening he came to the farmhouse and sat talking of his affairs, of
the progress and growth of the town and his part in it. Without hearing his
words both Clara and Hugh sat in silence, pretending to listen, glad of his
presence.
Hugh came to the shop at eight. On other mornings, all through that long
week of waiting, Clara had driven him to his work, the two riding in
silence down Medina Road and through the crowded streets of the town; but
on that morning he had walked.
On Medina Road, near the bridge where he had once stood with Clara and
where he had seen her hot with anger, something had happened, a trivial
thing. A male bird pursued a female among the bushes beside the road. The
two feathered, living creatures, vividly colored, alive with life, pitched
and swooped through the air. They were like moving balls of light going in
and out of the dark green of foliage. There was in them a madness, a riot
of life.
Hugh had been tricked into stopping by the roadside. A tangle of things
that had filled his mind, the wheels, cogs, levers, all the intricate parts
of the hay-loading machine, the things that lived in his mind until his
hand had made them into facts, were blown away like dust. For a moment he
watched the living riotous things and then, as though jerking himself back
into a path from which his feet had wandered, hurried onward to the shop,
looking as he went not into the branches of trees, but downward at the dust
of the road.
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