And then!
I saw Wanza part the tangles of syringa, and stand pink-robed, framed in white blossoms. Her face, rose-tinted and impassioned, was curtained on either side by her unbound resplendent hair. Her eyes, laughing and bright like happy stars, shone through the wilderness of locks. Her lips, smooth and pink as polished coral, smiled freshly as the lips of a tender child. Her arms were bare. In her strong brown hands she bore a wooden cage, and the waxwing slept within, its head beneath its wing. She hesitated, apparently saw no one—listened and heard no sound. She spurned her flowered frame, and came springing forward, her short skirt fluttering above her bare knees, her pink feet gleaming in the long grasses.
She passed close to me. Noiselessly she swept to the steps of the cedar room. She mounted. I saw her pass through the open doorway, where there was a pale nimbus of light. I saw her at the window. She took the magpie’s cage from its hook, and hung the waxwing there instead. Soon she reappeared. She carried the magpie in its cage. She came down the steps, and I heard a voice like a “moon-drowned” dream murmur roguishly:
“I have left them the waxwing. But I have taken away the magpie, lest it tell my secrets.”
I would have stopped her. But she had sprung with fluttering, perfumed haste through the syringa frame and vanished.
I dropped to the turf, clasped my arms about my head, and slept, a deep, refreshing sleep. It was dawn when I awakened, a pink, sweet-smelling dawn, scintillant with promise. I went to the cedar room, Joey slept, one arm thrown out above his tousled head, the shawl-flower quilt tossed aside. I covered him, and crossed to the window.
The magpie’s cage swung in its accustomed place.
As I approached, the bird fixed me with its quick, bright eye, and chortled:
“Mr. David Dale! Fixing man! Mr. David—dear.”
How strange that I should dream of Wanza!