The road then was full of silence and shadow. The drab
outlines grew faint and the mean houses were merged into the vaster
shapes of night. Robert waited, motionless, breathless. He was sure
that something was coming to him down the path of fading light. He did
not know what it was. Once, indeed, it had been Francey, with her
queer dancing step, her hair flying about her head like a flock of
little red-brown birds. She had hovered before him, on tiptoe, as
though the next gust of wind would blow her on her way down the street,
and looked at him. They had not spoken, but he had seen in her eyes
how sorry she was that she had not understood. And a warm content had
flowed over him. All the sore, aching places were healed and comforted.
But that had been only once. And then he wasn't sure that he hadn't
made it up. At all other times the thing was outside himself too
strange to have been imagined. It shook him from head to foot with
dread and longing. He wanted to run to meet it, to plunge into it,
reckless and shouting, as into a warm, dancing, summer sea. And yet it
menaced him. It was of fire and colour, of the rumble and thud of
armies, of laughter and singing and distant broken music. It was all
just round the comer. If he hurried he would see it, lose himself in
it, march to the tune he could never quite catch. But he was afraid,
and whilst he tried to make up his mind the light faded. The sounds
died.
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