She stood still. "Oh—Steven—look," she said.
He stood with her and looked.
The moon was hidden in the haze where the gray day and the white night were mixed. Across the bottom on the dim, watery green of the eastern slope, the thorn trees were in flower. The hot air held them like still water. It quivered invisibly, loosening their scent and scattering it. And of a sudden she saw them as if thrown back to a distance where they stood enchanted in a great stillness and clearness and a piercing beauty.
There went through her a sudden deep excitement, a subtle and mysterious joy. This passion was as distant and as pure as ecstasy. It swept her, while the white glamour lasted, into the stillness where the flowering thorn trees stood.
* * * * *
She wondered whether Steven had seen the vision of the flowering thorn trees. She longed for him to see it. They stood a little apart and her hand moved toward him without touching him, as if she would draw him to the magic.
"Steven—" she said.
He came to her. Her hand hung limply by her side again. She felt his hand close on it and press it.
She knew that he had seen the vision and felt the subtle and mysterious joy.
She wanted nothing more.