"Then you might have come sooner. There, give me my goldenrod. It's all scattered."
He began patiently to gather up the stalks, arranging them in an even layer of equal lengths.
Eugenia watched him, laughing.
"How precise you are!" she said.
"Aren't they right?" He looked up for her approval, and she saw that he had grown singularly boyish. His face was less rugged, more sensitive. He wore no hat, and his thick red hair had fallen across his forehead. She felt the peculiar power of his look as she had felt it before.
"No, they're wrong. They aren't Chinese puzzles. Don't fix them so tight. Here."
She took them from him, and as his hands touched hers she noticed that they were cold. "You're shaking them all apart," he protested, "and I took such a lot of trouble."
As she bent her head his eyes followed the dark coil of hair to the white nape of her neck where her collar rose. Several loose strands had blown across her ear and wound softly about the delicate lobe. He wanted to raise his hand and put them in place, but he checked himself with a start. With his eyes upon her he recalled the warmth of her woollen dress, and he wished that he had put his lips to it as he knelt. She would never have known.
Then, by a curious emotional phenomenon, she seemed to be suddenly invested with the glory of the sunset. The goldenrod burned at her feet and on her bosom, and her fervent blood leaped to her face. The next moment he staggered like a man blinded by too much light—the field, with Eugenia rising in its midst, flamed before his eyes, and he put out his hand like one in pain.
"What is it?" she asked quickly, and her voice seemed a part of the general radiance. "You have been looking at the sun. It hurts my eyes."