Gladness rushed back into the girl. She raised a face that sparkled.
"The very first," she affirmed, very much out of breath. "That is, upon the feet. In Italy we go up by diligence and there is always a hotel at the top for tea."
"We'll have a little old bonfire at the top for tea. . . . Don't take it so fast and you'll be all right," he advised, and, laying a restraining hand upon her arm he held her back while Cousin Jane, with her casual, careless smile, passed ahead to join one of the Martin party.
It was an act of masterful significance. Maria Angelina accepted it meekly.
"Like this?" asked Johnny of her smiling face.
"I love it," she told him, and looked happily at the green woods about them, and across the river, rushing now, to where the forest was clinging to sharply rising mountain flanks. Her eyes followed till they found the bare, shouldering peaks outlined against the blue and white of the cumulous sky.
The beauty about her flooded the springs of happiness. It was a wonderful world, a radiant world, a world of dream and delights. It was a world more real than the fantasy of moonlight. She felt more real. She was herself, too, not some strange, diaphanous image conjured out of tulle and gauze, she was her own true flesh-and-blood self, living in a dream that was true.
She looked away from the mountains and smiled up at Johnny Byrd very much as the young princess in the fairy tale must have smiled at the all-conquering prince, and Johnny Byrd's blue eyes grew bluer and brighter and his voice dropped into intimate possessiveness.
It didn't matter in the least what they talked about. They were absurdly merry, loitering behind the procession.
Suddenly it occurred to Maria Angelina that it had been some time since he had drawn her back from Cousin Jane's casual but comprehending smile, some time since they had even heard the echo of voices ahead.