Perched on her seat she surveyed the
gardens always with the same gaze of abstracted interest, watching the
clear, decent paths across whose grey background at the period of this
episode, the October leaves, golden, flaming, dun, gorgeous and
shrivelled, fell through the still air, whirled, and with a little sigh
of regret, one might fancy, sank and lay dead. The October colours, a
faint haze of smoky mist, the pale blue of the distant sky, the brown
moist earth, were gentle, mild, washed with the fading year's regretful
tears; the cries of the children, the rhythmic splash of the fountain
throbbed behind the colours like some hidden orchestra behind the
curtain at the play; the statues in the garden, like fragments of the
white bolster clouds that swung so lazily from tree to tree; had no
meaning in that misty air beyond the background that they helped to
fill. The year, thus idly, with so pleasant a melancholy, was slipping
into decay.
Sarah would watch. Then, without a word, she would slip from her seat,
and, walking solemnly, rather haughtily, would join some group of
children.
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