Or was
Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused in the general? Who could say? That
dog was getting his legs muddy! And he moved towards the coppice. There
had been the most delightful lot of bluebells, and he knew where some
still lingered like little patches of sky fallen in between the trees,
away out of the sun. He passed the cow-houses and the hen-houses there
installed, and pursued a path into the thick of the saplings, making for
one of the bluebell plots. Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered
a low growl. Old Jolyon stirred him with his foot, but the dog remained
motionless, just where there was no room to pass, and the hair rose
slowly along the centre of his woolly back. Whether from the growl and
the look of the dog's stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man
feels in a wood, old Jolyon also felt something move along his spine.
And then the path turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a
woman sitting. Her face was turned away, and he had just time to think:
'She's trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned.
Powers above! The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he had
just been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things blurred,
as if a spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight perhaps on her
violet-grey frock! And then she rose and stood smiling, her head a
little to one side.
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