V

But there she lay content. The scent of the bog myrtle and the meadowsweet was in her nostrils. The rooks’ hoarse laughter was in her ears. “I have found my mate,” she murmured. “It is the moor. I am nature’s bride,” she whispered, giving herself in rapture to the cold embraces of the grass as she lay folded in her cloak in the hollow by the pool. “Here will I lie.” (A feather fell upon her brow.) “I have found a greener laurel than the bay. My forehead will be cool always. These are wild birds’ feathers⁠—the owl’s, the nightjar’s. I shall dream wild dreams. My hands shall wear no wedding ring,” she continued, slipping it from her finger. “The roots shall twine about them. Ah!” she sighed, pressing her head luxuriously on its spongy pillow, “I have sought happiness through many ages and not found it; fame and missed it; love and not known it; life⁠—and behold, death is better. I have known many men and many women,” she continued; “none have I understood. It is better that I should lie at peace here with only the sky above me⁠—as the gipsy told me years ago. That was in Turkey.” And she looked straight up into the marvellous golden foam into which the clouds had churned themselves, and saw next moment a track in it, and camels passing in single file through the rocky desert among clouds of red dust; and then, when the camels had passed, there were only mountains, very high and full of clefts and with pinnacles of rock, and she fancied she heard goat bells ringing in their passes, and in their folds were fields of irises and gentian. So the sky changed and her eyes slowly lowered themselves down and down till they came to the rain-darkened earth and saw the great hump of the South Downs, flowing in one wave along the coast; and where the land parted there was the sea, the sea with ships passing; and she fancied she heard a gun far out at sea, and thought at first, “That’s the Armada,” and then thought, “No, it’s Nelson,” and then remembered how those wars were over and the ships were busy merchant ships; and the sails on the winding river were those of pleasure boats. She saw, too, cattle sprinkled on the dark fields, sheep and cows, and she saw the lights coming here and there in farmhouse windows, and lanterns moving among the cattle