It was some days later that she saw him again. She had gone out to gather goldenrod for the great blue vases that stood on the dining-room mantel-piece, and was standing knee-deep in the ragged field, when he leaped the fence that divided the farms and crossed to where she stood.
The sun was going down behind the blackened branches of the dead oak, and the wide common, spread with goldenrod and life-everlasting, lay like a sea of flame and snow. Eugenia, standing in its midst, a tall woman in a dress of brown, fell in richly with the surrounding colours. Her arms were filled with the yellow plumes and her dress was tinselled with the dried pollen that floated in the air. As Nicholas reached her she was seeking to free herself from the clutch of a crimson briar that crawled along the ground, and in the effort some of the broken stalks slipped from her hold.
Without speaking, he knelt beside her and released her skirt. "You have torn it," he said quietly, but he was looking up at her, and there was a quality in his voice which thrilled her.
"Have I?" she returned quickly. "Well, I can mend it—but there! it's caught again. I've been trying to get free for—hours."
He smiled.
"You came into the field only twenty minutes ago. I saw you. But, hold on. I'll uproot this blackberry vine while I'm about it."
He tore it from its tenacious hold to the earth and flung it into the field. Then he examined the rent in Eugenia's dress.
"If you had waited until I came you might have spared yourself this—patch," he observed.
"I shan't patch it—and I didn't know you were coming."
"Don't I always come—when there's a patch to be saved?" he asked. "I hate to see things ruined."