Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

That she should happen to see the wagon pass down the Melhurst road next morning was a mere matter of coincidence. Furze was standing up in the wagon like a charioteer, and she saw the blue wagon and the grey horses and his brown figure melt into the young green of May. A mere coincidence, yes, but it would seem that the subconscious part of her had been at work during the night, and that an idea was materializing. The bluebells in Gore Wood! And to begin with, the idea and its inspiration were as delicate and as virginal as the very scent of the wild hyacinths.

Arnold had given her the right of free trespass upon his farm, and her choosing to exercise this right while he was away at Melhurst concealed a mood rather than a motive. She hurried through the morning's work, brought out her old bicycle as though she were bound for Carslake, but when the sentinel firs had passed her into the Doomsday lane she dismounted and loitered. She was neither very sure of herself nor of her purpose. The passion to escape, to have a good time, to attain self-expression were like the surge of the sap. And so she loitered, asking herself questions, treading with unsure feet on the edge of her lover's world. What, as a woman, did she mean by self-expression? Escape, whither and how, and to what end? Not to be rooted in routine and interminable repetition? She saw the Doomsday woods rising about her, green with a golden and changeful greenness, and cleft with blue distances. The larches made her pause, throwing their reflections in the still water of the pond where the water-crowfoot was showing white. A wood-pigeon crooned. There was a great silence everywhere, save for the sounds made by living things, the underchant of a spring day. Beautiful? Yes, she had to allow it its beauty, and her blood stirred a little, and her brown eyes became elvish. She turned down towards the farm buildings where a sunny sloth seemed to prevail, and no live thing moved save the hens and sparrows and two or three young porkers scampering over the straw of a byre. Will and his boy were up the fields. She was bound ostensibly for Gore Wood, but the way to it was unknown to her.