So I turned and ran away,
taking the steps two at a time, to get away from her. In a moment I was
between the walls, climbing upwards, hidden.
The schoolmistress had told me I should find snowdrops behind San
Tommaso. If she had not asserted such confident knowledge I should have
doubted her translation of _perce-neige_. She meant Christmas roses all
the while.
However, I went looking for snowdrops. The walls broke down suddenly,
and I was out in a grassy olive orchard, following a track beside pieces
of fallen overgrown masonry. So I came to skirt the brink of a steep
little gorge, at the bottom of which a stream was rushing down its steep
slant to the lake. Here I stood to look for my snowdrops. The grassy,
rocky bank went down steep from my feet. I heard water tittle-tattling
away in deep shadow below. There were pale flecks in the dimness, but
these, I knew, were primroses. So I scrambled down.
Looking up, out of the heavy shadow that lay in the cleft, I could see,
right in the sky, grey rocks shining transcendent in the pure empyrean.
'Are they so far up?' I thought. I did not dare to say, 'Am I so far
down?' But I was uneasy.
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