The top of her head, as she bent over the task, was on a level with his lips, and when he stooped to kiss it the perfumes of the earth—flowers, trees, wind, water—rose about her like a cloud. Her hair was hot with sunshine, all silken with the air of summer. They were one being, growing out of the earth that he loved—the old, magical, beautiful earth that fed so great a part of his secret life from perennial springs.
As she drew away again from his caress he glanced down and saw that what she had pinned into his coat was a little cluster of leaves from the branch of a silver birch tree.
‘Then I, too, shall give you a sign,’ he said, ‘that shall mean the same as yours.’ And he picked a twig of pine needles from a tree beside them and twined it through a coil of her hair. Then, seizing her hands, he swung her round in a dance till they fell upon the river bank at last, tired out, and slept the sleep of children.
And after that, for a whole day it seemed, they wandered through this summer landscape, following the river to its source in the mountains, and then descending on the farther side to the shores of a blue-rimmed sea.
‘There are the ships,’ she cried, pointing to the shining expanse of water; ‘and, see, there is our ship coming for us.’
And as she stood there, laughing with excitement like a child, a barque with painted figure-head and brown sails yielding to the wind, came towards them over the waves, the bales of fruit upon her decks scenting the air, the smell of rope and tar and salty wood enticing them to distance and adventure. Through the cordage the very sound of the wind called to them to be off.
‘So at last we start upon our long, long voyage together,’ she said mysteriously, blushing with pleasure, and leading him down towards the ship.
‘And where are we to sail to?’ he asked; for the flap of the sails and the waves beating against the sides made resistance impossible. The sea-smells were in his nostrils. He glanced down at the veiled face beside him.
‘First to the Islands of the Night,’ she whispered so low that not even the wind could carry it away; ‘for there we shall be alone.’
‘And then——?’