THE   WINDOW
by a million years (Lily thought) the gazer and to
be communing already with a sky which beholds
an earth entirely at rest.
Looking at the far sand hills, William Bankes
thought of Ramsay: thought of a road in West-
morland, thought of Ramsay striding along a
road by himself hung round with that solitude
which seemed to be his natural air. But this was
suddenly interrupted, William Bankes remem-
bered (and this must refer to some actual incident),
by a hen, straddling her wings out in protection
of a covey of little chicks, upon which Ramsay,
stopping, pointed his stick and said " Pretty
—pretty," an odd illumination into his heart,
Bankes had thought it, which showed his sim-
plicity, his sympathy with humble things; but it
seemed to him as if their friendship had ceased,
there, on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsay
had married. After that, what with one thing and
another, the pulp had gone out of their friendship.
Whose fault it was he could not say, only, after a
time, repetition had taken the place of newness.
It was to repeat that they met. But in this dumb
colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained that
his affection for Ramsay had in no way dim-
inished; but there, like the body of a young
man laid up in peat for a century, with the red
fresh on his lips, was his friendship, in its
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