Helen laid hold of his beard.
"Am I a fool?" she said.
"Let me go, Helen."
"Am I a fool?" she repeated.
"Vile woman!" he exclaimed, and kissed her.
"We'll leave you to your vanities," she called back as they went out of
the door.
It was a beautiful evening, still light enough to see a long way down
the road, though the stars were coming out. The pillar-box was let into
a high yellow wall where the lane met the road, and having dropped the
letters into it, Helen was for turning back.
"No, no," said Rachel, taking her by the wrist. "We're going to see
life. You promised."
"Seeing life" was the phrase they used for their habit of strolling
through the town after dark. The social life of Santa Marina was carried
on almost entirely by lamp-light, which the warmth of the nights and the
scents culled from flowers made pleasant enough. The young women, with
their hair magnificently swept in coils, a red flower behind the ear,
sat on the doorsteps, or issued out on to balconies, while the young men
ranged up and down beneath, shouting up a greeting from time to time and
stopping here and there to enter into amorous talk. At the open windows
merchants could be seen making up the day's account, and older women
lifting jars from shelf to shelf. The streets were full of people, men
for the most part, who interchanged their views of the world as they
walked, or gathered round the wine-tables at the street corner, where an
old cripple was twanging his guitar strings, while a poor girl cried
her passionate song in the gutter.
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