He stood at the moment beside a great rock, clothed in a plush of lichen, which stuck from the hillside in a leafy place, and it seemed that the sound had come from behind that covert. Listening, and hearing no more, he turned and, wading in a sea of green, doubled the corner of the promontory—and saw her. She sat cross-legged like a Turk, her hands clasped about her knees, in a little mossy alcove so formed for a natural bower that nothing could have been prettier or more secure. There was a fence about it of the silver-birch sapling; its floor was level grass; hidden from all else, she could yet command through the trees a view of the lovely glen, with the shining river looping through it. Brion, standing waist-deep in bush, looked up at his goddess, like a young Leander rising from the sea; and she, for her part, returned his look—it seemed without apprehension.
So they remained, both speechless, till something happened: two little tell-tale dimples suddenly appeared at the wings of the girl’s short nose and flickered there. They meant—a characteristic feature which Brion came to love—that she must break the spell or laugh.
‘I am not going to laugh,’ she said, instantly and haughtily, to Brion’s expectant eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Is it a private seat?’ answered the boy. ‘I had not known it.’
‘If I choose to make it private——’ began the girl.
‘You should not cough,’ he said.
‘If I happen to have a cold——’
‘You do not look as if you had.’
‘Thank you for the rudeness. It is only such as I should expect from you.’
‘You remember me, then?’