Rachel's mouth was now perfectly formed to express her emotions, as it had not been in early youth. There had come a little added fulness in the curves of the upper lip, a little added sensitiveness in the line of the lower. With its well-defined corners, melting, when she smiled, into a pair of will-o'-the-wisp dimples, this mouth of hers was worthy to form the lure for many an exciting escapade on the part of her lovers. In her intelligent, sometimes perfervid, often gloomy face, it suggested a series of grace-notes introduced wilfully into a bit of serious music. It destroyed the general harmony of her face and increased its fascination. On the morning following the primitive race across the sands, the grace-notes dominated the more serious expression of her personality.
In the depths of her there was plenty of sadness, but the joy which is inseparable from any confession of love, even the love which battles against insurmountable barriers, glowed through her and informed every fibre of her with sparkling animation. She laughed frequently for no apparent cause.
The wide lawns about Gray Arches still glistened with dew and birds sang in the branches of the trees. The notes mingled with the plash of the waves on the distant beach, and with that infinite murmur of sounds that came out of the sunshine, out of the grass, out of the shimmering distances of that smiling country, checkered in light open fields and in dark variegated woods. All around, everywhere, was vivid palpitating life.
Rachel with a huge pair of shears that flashed in the sun, was snipping dead roses from a bush of the late-blooming variety. Brown and withered, they fell on the gravel path—mere ghosts of flowers; and, at every onslaught, all the green leaves of the bush shook and all its fresh blossoms trembled and poured forth an intoxicating perfume as if to thank her for the service. Beside her, seated on the grass, André was making the flowers they had gathered into a bouquet. He held in his brown hands nasturtiums, gladioli and dahlias. Occasionally, unable to resist an unusually perfect one, Rachel flung him still another rose.
"There," she said, "that's enough; if I cut any more, I shan't be able to carry them, and the hospital nurse may not let John Smith have them anyway."
A thorn had scratched her wrist, and she lifted the hand to her lips.
André regarded her with a vigorous gaze. "Do you know," he said at last, "you look like a rose yourself."
She threw him the shadow of a glance from between half-closed lids. In her morning dress of delicate pink muslin, beneath a shade hat with a flapping brim, she did look like a rose; and a wide collar, turned up over her throat to protect it from the sun, heightened the illusion. Against its colour her cheeks had taken a richer tinge and her eyes, between their curling lashes, were unusually deep and liquid. She was amazingly beautiful with a superadded beauty, with that fleeting and ethereal grace, which, independent of features or contours, touches any woman when she realizes that she is loved where she herself loves. Now, as if anxious to divert André's too curious gaze, she began speaking rapidly and almost at random. The air and the sunlight appeared to intoxicate her.
"Have you ever noticed, André," she cried, "the boastfulness of Nature when she has anything worth displaying? She is for all the world like a woman who takes particular pride in showing off her children, like that Mrs. Polestacker we both knew who was always calling attention to her Katie's teeth and curls. Take that rose bush," she continued, "it fairly swaggers with pride now that it is covered so finely with roses, but once the flowering season is over, and see how meekly it will obliterate itself; it will retire into the background like an old maid at a dance. For who notices the larkspur when its time is past, or the raspberry bush when it is no longer hung with its little crimson lamps? It is the energy that a growing, living thing puts forth that it would flaunt before us, saying, 'See here, I produced these flowers—these berries!' and it is that energy which attracts us—the immense energy of being." And throwing back her head, her neck on the strain, her arms falling at her sides, with the shears in one hand, she gazed into the deep blue of the sky which, bending down over the earth, was like an inverted sea.
Unconsciously, as in the old days, she spoke her thoughts aloud to André. He did not reply; if truth were told, he was in the dark as to her meaning, but that only increased the enchantment.