"I love you," he said again.
He heard her ask softly, "Why?"
"Because—because—oh, you're all I want. You're like the earth, like herbs, like fresh green grass. I've got your hands: give me the rest of you!"
Her eyes flashed open, he saw and heard her laugh, and their lips met across the bulky barrier.
"But I want you in my arms," he said, and in the clearing light he held her there, though the sound of an opening window told them that the farm was waking.
CHAPTER XIV
On the night of Mildred Caniper's return, Helen felt that the house had changed. A new emotion was mingling with the rest, and it was as unmistakable as a scent, and like a scent, it would grow fainter, but now it hung in every room and on the stairs. Surely Mr. Pinderwell must be disturbed by it. She fancied his grey old face puckered in bewilderment and his steps going faster up and down the stairs. Helen, too, was restless, and having slept uneasily, she woke in the dark of the night.
Outside her widely-opened windows the poplars were moving gently. They seemed near enough to touch, but she found something formidable in their aspect. Black, tall and bare, they watched her to the accompaniment of their indifferent whispering and swaying, and they warned her that whatever might be her lot, theirs would continue to be this one of lofty swinging. So, aware of all that happened they had always watched and whispered, and only tonight was she resentful in her love for them. Could they not feel a little sorrow for the woman burdened with trouble who had come back to the house? Had not the sense of that trouble stolen through the doors and windows? Beyond the garden walls there was, she knew, immunity from human pain. The moor understood it and therefore remained unmoved. It was the winds that grieved, the grey clouds that mourned and the sunshine that exulted; under all these, and changed only on the surface, the moor spread itself tranquilly, but the poplars were different. For Helen, all trees were people in another shape and she could not remember a time when these had not been her friends, but now they seemed not to care, and she started up in the sudden suspicion that nothing cared, that perhaps the great world of earth and sky and growing things had lives as absorbing and more selfish than her own.
"But only perhaps," she said aloud, asserting her faith in what she loved.