Ten minutes later they went down the brown road where the dust lay soft under their feet. White birches and young elders all fresh and green with early summer foliage surrounded them. Then from the road a little trodden path slipped back into the woods.
“Shall we try it?”
The woods closed behind them. The little path led a faltering way between trees where long streams of sunlight fell. Under their feet grass rustled. Branches leaned to touch them. All the woods seemed to know that lovers were passing and whispered tremulously.
Gregory heard the whispers and turned to the girl at his side. Each heart heard the other as he stopped to hold her in his embrace until they grew faint with joy.
“I love you, Freda,” said the man, ever restless.
Freda smiled at him. It was all she could do. Demonstrations of love were new to her. She was unbent, ready for caresses but not yet quite responsive except in the fine clarity of her mind. It was Gregory who must stop to bring her hand to his lips, to hold her against him for a silent moment.
The woods grew thinner.
“Ah, look,” cried Freda, “the enchanted woods end in a farmhouse yard!” She was standing on a little knoll and beneath them could be seen the farmhouse and its buildings, a group of children, perhaps the very ones who had trodden the path on their daily way to school.
“I like it,” said Gregory. “It’s love bending into life. Don’t you like to see it from here—like a pastoral picture? Children, kittens, the thin woman going to carry the scraps to the chickens. See, Freda—isn’t life beautiful?” Freda saw it through his poet’s vision for a moment. It was truly beautiful—the group held together by the common interest of procreation and maintenance—but she saw that more beautiful still were the eyes of Gregory. She had a sudden feeling that she must never dim his vision. Whatever might come she must protect that vision even though, as now, she might see that the farm below was full of signs of neglect and that the children quarreled.
They turned back and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and he took off her hat and stroked her hair gently as she lay against his arm. They did not talk much. Incomplete little phrases in constant reiteration of their own happiness. Those were all.