“We can never pluck our flowers twice,” said he. “The flowers you gathered then are ghosts.”
“Not a bit,” said she. “Here they are re-born,” and she went as before from bush to bush and bank to bank, humming a strain of sailor song.
They went under the trees on which he had fancied his heron’s nest, and they looked at each other, laughing.
“Wasn’t I a young fool?” he asked. “I was full of dream and conceit in those days.”
“And now?” she asked, burying her face in the flowers and eyeing him wonderingly.
“Oh, now,” said he, “I have lost every illusion.” “Or changed them for others, perhaps.” He started at the suggestion. “I suppose you are right, after all,” he said. “I’m still in a measure the child of fancy. This countryside moves me—I could tenant it with a thousand tales; never a wood or thicket in it but is full of song. I love it all, and yet it is my torture. When I was a child the Paymaster once got me on the bridge crying my eyes out over the screech of a curlew—that has been me all through life—I must be wondering at the hidden meanings of things. The wind in the winter trees, the gossip of the rivers, the trail of clouds, waves washing the shore at night—all these things have a tremendous importance to me. And I must laugh to see my neighbours making a to-do about a mercantile bargain. Well, I suppose it is the old Highlands in me, as Miss Mary says.” “I have felt a little of it in a song,” said Nan. “You could scarce do otherwise to sing them as you do,” he answered. “I never heard you yet but you had the magic key for every garden of fancy. One note, one phrase of yours comes up over and over again that seems to me filled with the longings of thousand years.”
He turned on her suddenly a face strenuous, eyes led with passion.
“I wish! I wish!” said he all fervent, “I wish could fathom the woman within.”
“Here she’s on the surface,” said Nan, a little impatiently, arranging her flowers. And then she looked him straight in the eyes. “Ladyfield seems a poor academy,” she said, “if it taught you but to speculate on things unfathomable. I always preferred the doer to the dreamer. The mind of man is a far more interesting thing than the song of the river I’m thinking, or the trailing of mist. And woman——” she laughed and paused.
“Well?” He eyed her robust and wholesome figure.