For
They Were Unsmiling Eyes And Themselves Expressed An Unutterable
Sadness, As It Appeared To Me At The First Swift
Glance; or perhaps not
that, as it presently seemed, but a shadowy something which sadness had
left in them, when
All pleasure and all interest in life forsook her,
with all affections, and she no longer cherished either memories or
hopes. This may be nothing but conjecture or fancy, but if she had been
a visitor from another world she could not have seemed more strange to
me.
I asked her what she was doing there so late in the day, and she
answered in a quiet even voice which had a shadow in it too, that she
was gathering samphire of that kind which grows on the flat saltings
and has a dull green leek-like fleshy leaf. At this season, she
informed me, it was fit for gathering to pickle and put by for use
during the year. She carried a pail to put it in, and a table-knife in
her hand to dig the plants up by the roots, and she also had an old
sack in which she put every dry stick and chip of wood she came across.
She added that she had gathered samphire at this same spot every August
end for very many years.
I prolonged the conversation, questioning her and listening with
affected interest to her mechanical answers, while trying to fathom
those unsmiling, unearthly eyes that looked so steadily at mine.
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