'THE DEWY MORN' 243 



and the air, the liberty of the tunic, was over ; her active 

 nature reasserted itself ; she rose and walked towards the 

 bathing apartment to dress. 



' " There's a rabbit in the ferns," said Shaw, following 

 her ; " I heard him rustle twice. Wonder why you won't 

 talk to-day, now. If I was to run round the water like 

 you swim round, I should die of pancking [panting], I 

 should." 



' She looked as if such exertion would overcome her : 

 short, plump, and merry. 



' Felise took no heed of Shaw's chatter ; she was think- 

 ing how to accomplish her resolution.'* 



The liberty of innocence has hardly reached beyond 

 that. Barnard watching Felise, like Geoffrey in ' Greene 

 Feme Farm ' watching Margaret with ' the devotion of an 

 artist,' suggests a coldness, as of the sea, in the volup- 

 tuousness, peculiar, perhaps, to Jefferies himself. 



The third passage is chapter xli., one of the richest 

 pastoral pictures in English, though pastoral is a poor 

 word to use of such realism in the portraits and the back- 

 ground. The August thunder booms far off at sea ; the 

 reapers reap in the brilliant sun ; and the lovers sit and 

 look out upon the land : ' Let us not outlive love in our 

 days, and come to look back with sorrow on those times. 

 You have seen the ships upon the sea ; they sail hither a:nd 

 thither thousands of miles. Do they find aught equal to 

 love ? Can they bring back precious gems to rival it 

 from the rich south ?' There is no pastoral picture like 

 it for the beauty of human passion and the abundance 

 and sympathy of Nature round about. 



The fourth passage is in the last pages of all. Felise and 

 Martial were married ; ' the man slept ; the woman, wake- 

 ful in her happiness, stole to the window where she had so 

 often sat of old time.' It was early in a morning of May, 

 and the contented woman is drawn against the vast 

 loveliness of dawn. ' A pure rest had come to her life. 

 Except to love and to love fulfilled, and then only to 



* 77/6' Dewy Morn. 



16 — 2 



