avys. But their talk lulled to a nervous hush. It
seemed to him that a great voice cried from the clouds: "It is beside
_Ruth_ that you are sitting; Ruth whose arm you feel!" In silence he
caught her left hand.

As he slowly drew back her hand and the reins with it, to stop the
ambling horse, the two children stared straight at each other, hungry,
tremulously afraid. Their kiss--not only their lips, but their spirits
met without one reserve. A straining long kiss, as though they were
forcing their lips into one body of living flame. A kiss in which his
eyes were blind to the enchantment of the jade light about them, his
ears deaf to brook and rustling forest. All his senses were
concentrated on the close warmth of her misty lips, the curve of her
young shoulder, her woman sweetness and longing. Then his senses
forgot even her lips, and floated off into a blurred trance of
bodiless happiness--the kiss of Nirvana. No foreign thought of trains
or people or the future came now to drag him to earth. It was the most
devoted, most sacred moment he had known.

As he became again conscious of lips and cheek and brave shoulders and
of her wide-spread fingers gripping his upper arm, she was slowly
breaking the spell of the kiss. But again and again she kissed him,
hastily, savage tokens of rejoicing possession.

She cried: "I do know now! I do love you!"

"Blessed----"

In silence they stared into the woods while her fingers smoothed his
knuckles. Her eyes were faint with tears, in the magic jade light.

"I didn't know a kiss could be like that," she marveled, presently. "I
wouldn't have believed selfish Ruth could give all of herself."

"Yes! It was the whole universe."

"Hawk dear, I wasn't experimenting, that time. I'm glad, glad! To know
I can really love; not just curiosity!... I've wanted you so all day.
I thought four o'clock wouldn't ever come--and oh, darling, my dear,
dear Hawk, I didn't even know for sure I'd like you when you came!
Sometimes I wanted terribly to have your silly, foolish, childish,
pale hair on my breast--such hair! lady's hair!--but sometimes I
didn't want to see you at all, and I was frightened at the thought of
your coming, and I fussed around the house till Mrs. Pat laughed at me
and accused me of being in love, and I denied it--and she was right!"

"Blessed, I was scared to death, all the way up here. I didn't think
you could be as wonderful as I knew you were! That sounds mixed
but----