Harry somehow felt he had been insulted, and opened his mouth to retort. But his brother suddenly began talking about an accident to a labourer at Grandturzel, and the occasion dropped.
After dinner Reuben set out with his axe, and Harry and Naomi sat together on the floor beside the kitchen fire. He gave her kisses like the wind, swift and cool. She was the only woman he had kissed, and she had never been kissed by any other man. Their love had its wildnesses, but not the wildnesses of fire—rather of the dancing boughs of some spring-caught wood, rioting together in May. Now and then he would sing as he held her to him, his fresh young voice ringing up to the roof....
Later in the afternoon they went out together. It seemed a pity to stay indoors in the soft swale, and Harry had to look at some poultry at Doozes. Naomi walked with her arm through his, her grey cloak over her shoulders.
"I wonder if Reuben's still at it?" said Harry, as the footpath began to skirt the new land.
"Yes—I see him yonder. He doesn't see us, I reckon."
They stood on the hillside and looked down at Reuben. He had felled five trees, and was now getting his axe into the sixth. They watched him in silence, and Naomi found herself remembering the way he had looked at her at dinner.
"He's a valiant man," said Harry.
Naomi saw him sweep the axe above his shoulder, and the ease and strength of his swing gave her a strange tingling sensation in her breast. The axe crashed into the wood, then Reuben pulled it up, and the muscles of his back made two long, ovoid lumps under his blue shirt. Again the axe swung and fell, again Naomi's body tingled as with a physical exhilaration.
The January twilight deepened, and soon Reuben's blue shirt was all that was clear in the hollow. The bites of the axe cracked out on the still air—and suddenly with a soft swish of boughs the tree fell.