“I can’t. Helen, it was here that——“
“I know,” she said. “I come here every day. I knew I should meet you here some day. And this of all days, the first of spring. Oh, Frank, let me go. I love you: is not that enough? And it is not for long now.”
“No, my darling, it is not long now.”
“And—and it has been so long. And I have wanted you so much.”
She disengaged herself quietly from his arms, but in a way that made it impossible for him to hold her.
“Good-bye,” she said. “You ought never to have come. And—oh, my darling—I thank you so for coming.”
For one infinitesimal moment she looked at him again, then with her quick, light step she went on up the path with Martin’s letter in her hand and never looked back. She did not pause till she reached the top of the wood, but as she walked she listened for and longed for, and yet dreaded, to hear footsteps behind. But none came, she had made her meaning too clear for that (and how she wished she had been less explicit), and having arrived at the top, she slackened her pace and opened Martin’s letter. It was very short, a couple of lines only, announcing his engagement to Stella and asking her to tell his father. And with that spring was complete.
Upward again lay her path; no more among trees and sheltered places, but high over the broad swell of the short-turfed downs, where shadows of clouds ran glorious races. Something in the huge view and the large sky chimed in wonderful harmony to the girl’s mood; all was so big, so untainted, so full of light. Beneath her foot the dead autumn turf still stretched in brown tufts and patches, but springing up in between were the myriad shoots of the young grass, and even since yesterday, she thought, the tone of the colour was changed. Till to-day all had been grey and brown, all still pointed backward, winterwards; but this morning it was different, and the million sprouting lives shouted, “Look forward, look forward! For, lo, the winter is past and the time of the singing-bird has come.” “Ah, song of songs,” she thought, “indeed it is so.”
Martin! There were no words into which she could put what she felt, any more than the pervading sunlight could be put into words. It was there, a great, huge, exultant presence that flooded everything. Ah, the beloved twin! Why, it was only a few years ago that he was in Eton jackets and broad white collars and sang treble. And she? Well, yes, she was in short frocks about the same time. Yet had not she, half an hour ago, down in the wood below her, where the young leaves hung like a green mist around the purple branches of the birch, felt a loving arm round her and kisses on her face. Oh, it was very wrong of Frank. No, not wrong of him,—he would have stood aside, he did stand aside to let her pass. It was very wrong of her. But at that moment she could not pass by,—it was as if her power of movement had been paralysed. Yet she was not in the least degree ashamed of herself, and she looked forward with a certain secret glee to telling her father,—for that had to be done,—for so by speaking of it she would live it over again. “No, that was not all,” she said to herself, rehearsing question and answer, “He kissed me.”
Sunlight, and larks invisible, and the shadows of clouds that coursed over the downs. And some distance off a tall figure, moving towards her rapidly, a figure she easily recognised. They came nearer and met. Her hat was in her hand, her hair tossed over her forehead, and there was spring and the sure promise of summer in her face. And in her father’s, too, there was something of that infused joy. His hand held a little bunch of primroses, which he had plucked as he walked.