nate note.

"And you said that I gave you rest. You were different."

He made as if he would draw nearer to her, and refrained. The kind heart
of Nature was in league with his. Nature, having foreknowledge of her own
hour, warned him that his hour was not yet.

And so he waited, while Nature, mindful of her purpose, began in Anne
Majendie her holy, beneficent work. The soul of the place was charged
with memories, with presciences, with prophecies. A thousand woodland
influences, tender timidities, shy assurances, wooed her from her soul.
They pleaded sweetly, persistently, till Anne's brooding face wore the
flush of surrender to the mysteries of earth.

The spell was broken by a squirrel's scurrying flight in the boughs above
them. Anne looked up, and laughed, and their moment passed them by.

CHAPTER X

"Are you tired?" he asked.

They had walked about the wood, made themselves hungry, and lunched like
labourers at high noon.

"No, I'm only thirsty. Do you think there's a cottage anywhere where you
could get me some water?"

"Yes, there's one somewhere about. I'll try and find it if you'll sit
here and rest till I come back."

She waited. He came back, but without the water. His eyes sparkled with
some mysterious, irrepressible delight.

"Can't you find it?"

"Rather. I say, do come and look. There's such a pretty sight."

She rose and went with him. Up a turning in the dell, about fifty yards
from their tree, a long grassy way cut sheer through a sheet of wild
hyacinths. It ran as if between two twin borders of blue mist, that
hemmed it in and closed it by the illusion of their approach. On either
side the blue mist spread, and drifted away through the inlets of the
wood, and became a rarer and rarer atmosphere, torn by the tree-trunks
and the fern. The path led to a small circular clearing, a shaft that
sucked the daylight down. It was as if the sunshine were being poured in
one stream from a flooded sky, and danced in the dark cup earth held for
it. The trees grew close and tall round the clearing. Light dripped from
their leaves and streamed down their stems, turning their grey to silver.
The bottom of the cup was a level floor of grass that had soaked in light
till it shone like emerald. A stone cottage faced the path; so small that
a laburnum brushed its roof and a may-tree laid a crimson face against
the grey gable of its side. The patch of garden in front was stuffed with
wall-flowers an