II
He was willing enough for his own part to relapse into his own thoughts. He went so deeply into them that, coming to the Ridge and involuntarily pausing there, he was twice told by her "Here I return," before he was aroused to her again. Bemused, he stared at her a moment as one stares that is aroused from sleep, and his mind jumped back in confusion to the last words that had passed between them. "Well, if you were so anxious for the lessons, why did you give them up when the winter was over?"
She answered him—sadness in her voice rather than reproach—"We have done that talk long since. Thou dost not heed me. It is that I am going that I am telling thee."
He knew he had been careless of her again, and sought to laugh it off. "Well, it is why you stopped your lessons that I am asking thee," he mimicked her. "Woman's reasons, Ima?"
She threw out her hands towards him in a gesture of appeal. "Ah, do not toy me woman's reasons," she said. "Think me less light than that—if thou thinkest of me. Not woman's reasons bade me back to the van when winter broke. Not woman's reasons. I knew me there were green buds in the ditches beneath the dead wet leaves. I had discovered them to the sun and the breezes many years—turning back the leaves and smelling the smell they have. How could I stay beneath a roof when I had thoughts of such?"
She drew a deep and tremulous breath of the mild night air as though she inhaled the scents of which she spoke, and he watched her gaze across the eastward vale with those starry eyes that, as she went on, never the lids unstarred, and she said: "Thoughts of such—of green buds in the ditches beneath the moulding leaves that waited for me to uncover them and knew me when I came; of the first cloud of dust along the road—dust, ah! of tiny sprigs on every bough that I might run to see; of busy birds stealing the straws and coming for the bits of cloth and wool they know I place for them; of early light with all the trees and fields wet and aglisten; of gentle evenings when the new stars come dropping down the sky; of the road—the road, ah!—I sitting on the shafts; of the cool brooks, and leading Pilgrim in and hearing him suck the water and hearing him tear the grass; of the running stream about my feet and the soft grass that sinks a little—these bade me back."
She turned to him and said in the low voice in which she had been speaking: "Not women's reasons these." She changed her voice to one that cried: "Remember me that if I am not like fine ladies I cannot help be what I am with these things speaking to me. Now I am going," and she went swiftly from him and was a dozen paces gone before he called her back.
III
"Ima!" While she spoke he had envisaged what she told, setting its freedom and its elemental note to his own desires as one sets music that stirs the breast. Shaking himself from the spell, "Ima!" he called, and went to her. "Don't go like that. Say good-by properly."
She stopped short and put her hand to her side as though his call had launched a shaft that struck her. She did not turn—as though she dared not turn—until he was close up to her, touching her. Then she turned, and he saw her eyes amazingly lit, and as they met his, saw the light pass like a star extinguished. It was as if she had expected much and had found nothing; and it was so pronounced that he said: "Ima! Why, what did you think I was going to say?"