just to be alive is a rapture. Of course it may be cancelled by care like any other joy. But Litvinoff felt as if he had no cares. He was going to meet the woman he loved, and the nearer he got to her the more he loved her. In love, as in friendship, nearness was everything to him.
Every figure in the distance he thought was her figure. If you have ever gone to meet a person whom you very intensely wished to meet, you will remember how constantly recurring is that illusion. You will remember the spasm of vindictive hate which seizes on you when the figure in the distance is neared, and dispels your illusion by being itself and not the one you wanted it to be.
Paul's Cray Common seemed a paradise to him. It does make a fairly good one under favourable circumstances, with its heather, and gorse, and larch, and oak saplings, and, fairest of all, its graceful swaying silver birches. The birds were singing madly, and as he felt the springy turf under his feet, and the warm spring sun on his shoulders, he began to sing, too, a tender little French song, all about green woodland paths, and youth, and love, and happiness.
Alice Hatfield's heart was very sad, but it was a quiet sadness, that did not shut out the charm of the spring. Under the influence of the young life blood of the year that seemed to be throbbing through that perfect day, she had felt strong, and had walked with more swiftness than usual, and now, as she was returning with a basket, in which her butter lay, under cool green leaves, she began to walk more slowly and to consider two pounds of butter heavier than she had thought it before. She had been revelling among the primroses and dog violets, and had filled up her basket with the pale, yellow primrose stars and the delicate pink and white wind-flowers. She was tired, certainly, and she turned aside and sat down on a felled tree, in a certain little pine copse that runs along by the road-side. The pine needles lay brown, and soft, and thick under her feet. A little bright-eyed, red-brown squirrel came half-way down one of the trees to look at her, but seemed to find her not quite as nice as he had expected, for he whisked his tail with undisguised contempt, and went back to his home with a lightning-like spiral scramble. He must have been a squirrel hard to please, for it is a fact that, in spite of illness and trouble, Alice was far prettier now than when her sweet face had first caught Count Litvinoff's eyes on the Birkenhead Ferry.
She sat quietly gazing through the pine trees, with her head turned from the road. Presently she stooped to attempt the capture of a very young and very yellow frog which had hopped close to her feet, regardless of the pine needles. As she did so her heart stood still, for her ears caught the tramp, tramp of a man's footstep, and the ringing sound of a man's voice, a voice she knew,—
'Viens, suivons les sentiers ombreux,
Ou s'égarent les amoureux
Le printemps nous appelle,
Viens! Soyons heureux!'
She rose to her feet, and involuntarily uttered a low cry. She dared not turn her head. The singing stopped abruptly, there was a crash through the brambles, and in a moment a pair of strong arms were round her, and lips close to her ear murmured,—
'My little girl!'
She rested on his arm for one moment Then she said, in a choked sort of voice, as she tried to release herself,—
'It's no use, I cannot come back. You have not come here to ask me back. Do, do leave me alone!'