The
colour was as beautiful as a Brabizon; there were many tints of blue,
no doubt, but the twilight had gathered the sea and sky into one tone,
or what seemed to be one tone.
"You wanted to see olive trees--those are olives."
"So those are olives! Do I at last look upon olives?"
"Are you disappointed?"
"Yes and no. The white gnarled trunk makes even the young trees seem
old. The olive is like an old man with skimpy legs. It seems to me a
pathetic tree. One does not like to say it is ugly; it is not ugly,
but it would be puzzling to say wherein lies its charm, for it throws
no shade, and is so grey--nothing is so grey as the olive. I like the
ilex better."
Where the road dipped there was a group of ilex trees, and it was in
their shade that I kissed Doris, and the beauty of the trees helps me
to appreciate the sentiment of those kisses. And I remember that road
and those ilex trees as I might remember a passage in Theocritus.
Doris--her very name suggests antiquity, and it was well that she was
kissed by me for the first time under ilex trees; true that I had
kissed her before, but that earlier love story has not found a
chronicler, and probably it never will. I like to think that the
beauty of the ilex is answerable, perhaps, for Doris's kisses--in a
measure.
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