Presently he heard faint sounds, and stole towards
them. Under a beech-tree he almost stumbled over Thyme, lying with her
face pressed to the ground. The young doctor's heart gave a sickening
leap; he quickly knelt down beside her. The girl's body, pressed close
to the dry beech-mat, was being shaken by long sobs. From head to foot
it quivered; her hat had been torn off, and the fragrance of her hair
mingled with the fragrance of the night. In Martin's heart something
seemed to turn over and over, as when a boy he had watched a rabbit
caught in a snare. He touched her. She sat up, and, dashing her hand
across her eyes, cried: "Go away! Oh, go away!"
He put his arm round her and waited. Five minutes passed. The air was
trembling with a sort of pale vibration, for the moonlight had found
a hole in the dark foliage and flooded on to the ground beside them,
whitening the black beech-husks. Some tiny bird, disturbed by these
unwonted visitors, began chirruping and fluttering, but was soon still
again. To Martin, so strangely close to this young creature in the
night, there came a sense of utter disturbance.
'Poor little thing!' he thought; 'be careful of her, comfort her!'
Hardness seemed so broken out of her, and the night so wonderful! And
there came into the young man's heart a throb of the knowledge--very
rare with him, for he was not, like Hilary, a philosophising
person--that she was as real as himself--suffering, hoping, feeling,
not his hopes and feelings, but her own.
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