'Then let me go,' said Albert. 'Let me go, will you?'
The morrow was Sunday, a sunny day, but a cold evening. The sky was grey,
the new foliage very green, but the air was chill and depressing. Albert
walked briskly down the white road towards Beeley. He crossed a larch
plantation, and followed a narrow by-road, where blue speedwell flowers
fell from the banks into the dust. He walked swinging his cane, with
mixed sensations. Then having gone a certain length, he turned and began
to walk in the opposite direction.
So he saw a young woman approaching him. She was wearing a wide hat of
grey straw, and a loose, swinging dress of nigger-grey velvet. She walked
with slow inevitability. Albert faltered a little as he approached her.
Then he saluted her, and his roguish, slightly withered skin flushed. She
was staring straight into his face.
He fell in by her side, saying impudently:
'Not so nice for a walk as it was, is it?'
She only stared at him. He looked back at her.
'You've seen me before, you know,' he said, grinning slightly. 'Perhaps
you never noticed me. Oh, I'm quite nice looking, in a quiet way, you
know. What--?'
But Miss Stokes did not speak: she only stared with large, icy blue eyes
at him. He became self-conscious, lifted up his chin, walked with his
nose in the air, and whistled at random. So they went down the quiet,
deserted grey lane. He was whistling the air: 'I'm Gilbert, the filbert,
the colonel of the nuts.
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