“I like to have you with me always,” she murmured.
He was intoxicated by so close an avowal of love from lips that were usually mute.
“We shall be married in a month,” he cried. “Can you smell violets?”
“Something sweet I smell.”
But it was getting too dusky in the coppice to find these violets themselves twilight-hued, and they turned homeward across the open fields. Birds were flying to the coverts, linnets mostly, in twittering companies.
“These eves of early Spring are like swords,” Michael exclaimed.
“Like what?” Lily asked, smiling at his exaggeration.
“Like swords. They seem to cut one through and through with their sharpness and sweetness.”
“Oh, you mean it’s cold,” she said. “Take my arm.”
“Well, I meant rather more than that, really,” Michael laughed. But because she had offered him her arm he forgot at once how far she had been from following his thoughts.