Paul entered instantly into the spirit of her dream. The way her child’s imagination seized upon inanimate objects and incorporated them into the substance of her own life delighted him, for it was also his own way, and he understood it.
‘Then that old pine,’ he answered, pointing to the other, ‘is my tree. See! It’s come out of the wood to protect the little birch.’
The child ran from his side and stood close to them. ‘Yes, and don’t you see,’ she cried, her eyes popping with excitement, ‘this is me, and that’s you!’ She patted the two trunks, first the birch and then the pine. ‘It’s us! I never thought of that before, never! It’s you looking after me and taking care of me, and me dancing and laughing round you all the time!’ She ran back to his side and hopped up to plant a kiss in his beard. He quite forgot to correct her a’venturous grammar.
‘Of course,’ he cried, ‘so it is. Look! The branches touch too. Your little leaves run up among my old needles!’
Nixie clapped her hands and ran to and fro, laughing and talking, on errands of further discovery, while Paul sat down to watch the scene and think his own thoughts. It was just the picture to appeal strongly to him. At any time the beauty of the tree would have seized him, but with no one else could he have enjoyed it in the same way, or spoken of his enjoyment. While Nixie flitted here and there in the sunshine, the little birch behind her bent down and then released itself with a graceful rush of branches as the pressure of the wind passed. Against the blue sky she tossed her leafy hands; then, with a passing shiver, stood still.
‘I wonder,’ ran his thought, ‘why poets need invent Dryads when such an incomparable revelation lies plain in one of the commonest of trees like this?’ And, at the same moment, he saw Nixie dart past between the fir trees and the birch, as though the very Dryad he was slighting had slipped out to chide him. Her hair spread in the sunshine like leaves. In the world of trees here, surely, was the very essence of what is feminine caught and imprisoned. Whatever of grace and wonder emanate from the face and figure of a young girl to enchant and bewitch here found expression in the silver stem and branches, in the running limbs so slender, in the twigs that bent with their cataracts of flying hair. Seen against the dark pine-wood, this little birch tree laughed and danced; over that silver skin ran, positively, smiles; from the facets of those dainty leaves twinkled mischief and the joys of innocence. Here, in a word, was Nixie herself in the terms of tree-dom; and, as he watched, the wind swept out the branches towards him in a cluster of rustling leaves,—and at the same instant Nixie shot laughing to his side.
For a second he hardly knew whether it was the child or the silver birch that nestled down beside him and began to murmur in his ear.
‘This is it, you see,’ she was saying; ‘and there’s your wind of inspiration blowing now.’
‘We shall have to alter the first verse then,’ he said gravely:
‘The winds of inspiration blow,