“What do you think of my summer home?” she had exclaimed, abruptly. “Come out and admire the sweet peas,” and with a gay little flourish she had led him into the garden. “They tell me Western flowers have a brilliance and a fragrance which the East, with all its advantages, cannot duplicate. Is that true?”
“I believe it is. The East has greater profusion—more varieties—but the individual qualities do not seem to be so well developed.”
“I see you know something of Eastern flowers,” she had said, and he fancied he had caught a note of banter—or was it inquiry?—in her voice. Then, with another abrupt change of subject, she had made him describe his house on the hill. But he had said nothing of the whim-room.
“I must go,” he had exclaimed at length. “I left the horses tied in the field.”
“So you must. I shall let Wilson visit you frequently, if he is not a trouble.”
Then she had chosen a couple of blooms and pinned them on his coat, laughingly overriding his protest that they consorted poorly with his costume. And she had shaken hands and said good-bye in the manner of good friends parting.
The more Grant thought of it the more was he convinced that in her case, as in his own, the years had failed to extinguish the spark kindled in the foothills that night so long ago. He reminded himself continually that she was Transley’s wife, and even while granting the irrevocability of that fact he was demanding to know why Fate had created for them both an atmosphere charged with unspoken possibilities. He had turned her words over again and again, reflecting upon the abrupt angles her speech had taken. In their few minutes’ conversation three times she had had to make a sudden tack to safer subjects. What had she meant by that reference to Eastern and Western flowers? His answer reminded him how well he knew. And the confession about her husband, the worshipper of success—“what he calls success”—how much tragedy lay under those light words?
The valley was filled with shadow, and the level rays of the setting sun fell on the young man’s face and splashed the hill-tops with gold and saffron as within his heart raged the age-old battle.... But as yet he felt none of its wounds. He was conscious only of a wholly irrational delight.
As the next forenoon passed Grant found himself glancing with increasing frequency toward the end of the field where the little boy might be expected to appear. But the day wore on without sign of his young friend, and the furrows which he had turned so joyously at nine were dragging leadenly at eleven. He had not thought it possible that a child could so quickly have won a way to his affections. He fell to wondering as to the cause of the boy’s absence. Had Zen, after a night’s reflection, decided that it was wiser not to allow the acquaintance to develop? Had Transley, returning home, placed his veto upon it? Or—and his heart paused at this prospect—had the foot been more seriously hurt than they had supposed? Grant told himself that he must go over that night and make inquiry. That would be the neighborly thing to do....
But early that afternoon his heart was delighted by the sight of a little figure skipping joyously over the furrows toward him. He had his hat crumpled in one hand, and his teddy-bear in the other, and his face was alive with excitement. He was puffing profusely when he pulled up beside the plow, and Grant stopped the team while he got his breath.