The sun flooded the meadow all at once in a tide of pallid light; and the earth ceased to struggle and brood in the dark coil of itself, and spread itself smiling and released. The spell within the clouded crystal of the afternoon broke; they stretched and stirred. Judith looked up at the big elm.
‘Who can climb this?’ she said.
‘Up with you,’ said Martin.
She climbed as she had not climbed since childhood, lifting herself lightly, unhesitatingly from branch to branch. At the top she looked down and saw them all small beneath her, looking up. Boldly from her eminence she called to the little creatures to come up; but not one of them would.
She descended again, feeling young and silly in the face of their lack of physical ambition. But they were all smiling upwards to receive her. Martin held his hands up to her and she took them and jumped from the bottom bough.
‘You haven’t forgotten your stuff,’ he said, and his eyes dwelt on her with their faithful brown look.
‘I wish I could do that,’ said Mariella. ‘I never could.’
‘And now,’ said Julian, ‘divert us with a hand spring or so,’—and his harsh face looked half-amused, half-clouded with an odd look,—almost like jealousy.
He had never been really pleased with the spectacle of other people’s successes: He found it too bitter not to be himself the one to excel. But he could not trouble her to-day or make her doubtful.
Roddy said nothing,—only looked at her out of glinting, twinkling eyes.