And at the last, when they could no longer ignore the incredible fact that the afternoon was gone, that only a golden western sky behind the flat, blue mass of the hills remained to tell of the vanished sunlight, they rose reluctantly, hesitant. He had taken her two hands to help her to her feet. In the grayness of the twilight they looked at each other, and she felt the approach of a moment tremendous, irrevocable.
He was drawing her closer. She felt, with the pull of his hands, an urging within herself, a compulsion like a strong current, sweeping her away, merging her with something unknown, vast, beautifully terrible. Suddenly, in a panic, pushing him blindly away, she heard herself saying, "No—no! Please—" The tension of his arms relaxed.
"All right—if you don't want—I didn't mean—" he stammered. Their hands clung for a moment, uncertainly, then dropped apart. They stumbled down the dusky trail and drove home almost in silence.
Spring came capriciously that next year. She smiled unexpectedly upon the hills through long days of golden sunshine, coaxing wild flowers from the damp earth and swelling buds with her warm promise. She retreated again behind cold skies, abandoning eager petals and sap-filled twigs to the chill desolation of rain and the bitterness of frost.
Farmers trudging behind their plows felt her coming in the stir of the scented air, in the responsiveness of the springy soil and, looking up at the sparkling skies, felt a warmth in their own veins even while they shook their heads doubtfully. And rising in the dawns they tramped the orchard rows, bending tips of branches between anxious fingers, pausing to cut open a few buds on their calloused palms.
But to Helen the days were like notes in a melody. Linnet's songs and sunshine streaming through the attic windows or gray panes and rain on the roof were one to her. She woke to either as to a holiday. She slipped from beneath the patchwork quilt into a cold room and dressed with shivering fingers, hardly hearing Mabel's drowsy protests at being waked so early. Life was too good to be wasted in sleep. She seemed made of energy as she ran down the steep stairs to the kitchen. It swelled in her veins as a river frets against its banks in the spring floods.
Every sight and sound struck upon her senses with a new freshness. There was exhilaration in the bite of cold water on her skin when she washed in the tin basin on the bench by the door, and the smell of coffee and frying salt pork was good. She sang while she spread the red table-cloth on the kitchen table and set out the cracked plates.
She sang:
"You're as welcome as the flowers in Ma-a-ay,