She
surrendered herself to the light happiness of the moment. It was
good to escape for an hour from the rigid lines of beds and the
pale suffering faces and the eternal faint odour of disinfectants,
into all this greenery and the fellowship of birds and beasts
unconscious of war. She remembered that once, in the pocket of her
cloak, there had been a biscuit or two. Very slowly and carefully,
her mind fixed on the robin, she fished for crumbs and very
carefully and gently she fed the impudent, stomach-centred fellow.
She had attracted him to the end of the seat, when, whizz and
clatter, came a motor cycle down the avenue, and off in a terrible
scare flew the robin; the idyll of tree and beast and birds
suffered instant disruption and Randall Holmes, in his canvas
suit, stood before her.
He said:
"Good morning, Phyllis."
She said, with cold politeness: "Good morning." But she asked the
spring morning in dumb piteousness, "Oh, why has he come? Why has
he come to spoil it all?"
He sat down by her side. "This is the luckiest chance I've ever
had--finding you here," he said. "You've had all my letters,
haven't you?"
"Yes," she answered, "and I've torn them all up.
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