"Upon my word!" he exclaimed; "I never was so snubbed and patronised in all my life!"
"Beware, then!" she retorted, with an enchanting sideway glance: "noli me tangere!" At the same instant he was aware of her arm in light, friendly contact against his, and heard her musing aloud in deep contentment:
"Such perfect satisfaction to have you again, Louis. The world is a gray void without the gods."
And so, leisurely, they breasted the ascent and came out across the height-of-land. Here and there a silvery ghost of the shorn forest stood, now almost mercifully hidden in the green foliage of hard wood—worthlessly young as yet but beautiful.
From tree to tree flickered the brilliant woodpeckers—they of the solid crimson head and ivory-barred wings. The great vermilion-tufted cock-o'-the-woods called querulously; over the steel-blue stump-ponds the blue kingfishers soared against the blue. It was a sky world of breezy bushes and ruffled waters, of pathless fields and dense young woodlands, of limpid streams clattering over greenish white rocks, pouring into waterfalls, spreading through wild meadows set with iris and pink azalea.
"How is the work going, Louis?" she asked, glancing at him askance.
"It's stopped."
"A cause de—?"
"Je n'en sais rien, Valerie."
She flicked the harness with her whip, absently. He also leaned back, thoughtfully intent on the blue hills in the distance.