smell of the rejuvenated
earth, as it stirred and awoke from its winter sleep had reached her
no less than it had reached the springing grass and the heart of buried
bulbs, and never perhaps in all her life had she been happier than on
that balmy morning of early March. Here the stir of spring that had
crept across miles of smoky houses to the gardens behind Curzon Street,
was more actively effervescent, and the "bare, leafless choirs" of the
trees, which had been empty of song all winter, were once more resonant
with feathered worshippers. Through the tussocks of the grey grass of
last year were pricking the vivid shoots of green, and over the grove
of young birches and hazel the dim, purple veil of spring hung mistlike.
Down by the water-edge of the Penn ponds they strayed, where moor-hens
scuttled out of rhododendron bushes that overhung the lake, and hurried
across the surface of the water, half swimming, half flying, for the
shelter of some securer retreat. There, too, they found a plantation of
willows, already in bud with soft moleskin buttons, and a tortoiseshell
butterfly, evoked by the sun from its hibernation, settled on one of the
twigs, opening and shutting its diapered wings, and spreading them to
the warmth to thaw out the stiffness and inaction of winter. Blackbirds
fluted in the busy thickets, a lark shot up near them soaring and
singing till it became invisible in the luminous air, a suspended
carol in the blue, and bold male chaffinches, seeking their mates with
twittered songs, fluttered with burr of throbbing wings. All the promise
of spring was there--dim, fragile, but sure, on this day of days,
this pearl that emerged from the darkness and the stress of winter,
iridescent with the tender colours of the dawning year.

They lunched in the open motor, Miss Baker again obligingly removing
herself to the box seat, and spreading rugs on the grass sat in the
sunshine, while Lady Ashbridge talked or silently watched Michael as he
smoked, but always with a smile. The one little note of sadness which
she had sounded when she said she was frightened lest everything should
break, had not rung again, and yet all day Michael heard it echoing
somewhere dimly behind the song of the wind and the birds, and the
shoots of growing trees. It lurked in the thickets, just eluding him,
and not presenting itself to his direct gaze; but he felt that he saw it
out of the corner of his eye, only to lose it when he looked at i