But now Elizabeth's curiosity was aroused. "The scheme of things entire" had begun to make audible to her its first faint flute-like call, a call that, before there has fallen on the spirit any experience of agony, of darkness, of loneliness, is as fascinating as the music of Pan or the voice of Sirens, and she longed to know how it sounded in the ears of others. For herself, she was confused, bewildered by the remote uncapturable melody, that at present only gave hints in broken phrases to her untrained ear.
The two were riding back one day from a horseback saunter along the lanes among the fruit orchards. The blossom was beginning to fall, and when a puff of wind disturbed its uncertain clinging the ground below would be showered with snowy pear-blossom or pink with the flower of the peach. Elizabeth, in tune with the spring, was inclined to lament this.
"I would almost go without peaches," she said, "if that would save the blossom from falling."
He laughed.
"Yet it would be a hard choice," he said, "to determine whether one would look at a tree covered with blossom, instead of having dessert. I think I should let Nature take its course, Lizzie, after all."
"Is it meant that the blossom has to fall before the fruit comes?" she asked.
"Well, yes. To want it otherwise would be parallel to wanting girls and boys not to grow up."
"And you do?"
"Naturally, though it is at the expense of their rosy petals." This seemed to give Elizabeth sufficient material for a pondering silence, which lasted a couple of minutes.
"I want to grow up," she observed, "and keep all my youth as well."