Nevertheless it was a lovely place, in the cold
shadow, complete; when one forgot the shining rocks far above, it was a
complete, shadowless world of shadow. Primroses were everywhere in nests
of pale bloom upon the dark, steep face of the cleft, and tongues of
fern hanging out, and here and there under the rods and twigs of bushes
were tufts of wrecked Christmas roses, nearly over, but still, in the
coldest corners, the lovely buds like handfuls of snow. There had been
such crowded sumptuous tufts of Christmas roses everywhere in the
stream-gullies, during the shadow of winter, that these few remaining
flowers were hardly noticeable.
I gathered instead the primroses, that smelled of earth and of the
weather. There were no snowdrops. I had found the day before a bank of
crocuses, pale, fragile, lilac-coloured flowers with dark veins,
pricking up keenly like myriad little lilac-coloured flames among the
grass, under the olive trees. And I wanted very much to find the
snowdrops hanging in the gloom. But there were not any.
I gathered a handful of primroses, then I climbed suddenly, quickly out
of the deep watercourse, anxious to get back to the sunshine before the
evening fell.
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