noon
But she did not hear ; she was beyond the reach of any power to sadden her ; she was watching the white oxen that stood on the purple brow of the just reapen lands , and the rosy clouds that blew like a shower of apple-blossoms across the sky to the south . There was a sad darkling Calvary on the edge of the harvest-field that looked black against the blue sky ; its shadow fell across the road , but she did not see it : she was looking at the sun . There is not much change in the great Soignies woods . They are aisles on aisles of beautiful green trees , crossing and recrossing ; tunnels of dark foliage that look endless ; long avenues of beech , of oak , of elm , or of fir , with the bracken and the brushwood growing dense between ; a delicious forest growth everywhere , shady even at noon , and by a little past midday dusky as evening ; with the forest fragrance , sweet and dewy , all about , and under the fern the stirring of wild game , and the white gleam of little rabbits , and the sound of the wings of birds . Soignies is not legend-haunted like the Black Forest , nor king-haunted like Fontainebleau , nor sovereign of two historic streams like the brave woods of Heidelberg ; nor wild and romantic , arid broken with black rocks , and poetized by the shade of Jaques , and swept through by a perfect river , like its neighbors of Ardennes ; nor throned aloft on mighty mountains like the majestic oak glades of the Swabian hills of the ivory carvers . Soignies is only a Flemish forest in a plain , throwing its shadows over corn-fields and cattle pastures , with no panorama beyond it and no wonders in its depth . But it is a fresh , bold , beautiful forest for all that .