"Now?"
"Not yet," he repeated more softly.
"Now, then?"
"Not for a long time."
His voice thrilled her, and she glanced up at him. His laughing eyes were glowing down upon her under his heavy mat of hair. She sat up and looked toward the wagon crawling away in the distance; her father was no longer in sight.
One of the ewes, dissatisfied with a back view, stamped her forefoot impatiently, and ran round in front, and out into the sun. Her lambs followed, and the three, ranging themselves abreast, stared at Daphne, with a look of helpless inquiry.
"Sh-pp-pp!" she cried, throwing up her hands at them, irritated. "Go away!"
They turned and ran; the others followed; and the whole number, falling into line, took a path meekly homeward. They left a greater sense of privacy under the tree. Several yards off was a small stock-pond. Around the edge of this the water stood hot and green in the tracks of the cattle and the sheep, and about these pools the yellow butterflies were thick, alighting daintily on the promontories of the mud, or rising two by two through the dazzling atmosphere in columns of enamored flight.
Daphne leaned over to the blue grass where it swayed unbroken in the breeze, and drew out of their sockets several stalks of it, bearing on their tops the purplish seed-vessels. With them she began to braid a ring about one of her fingers in the old simple fashion of the country.
As they talked, he lay propped on his elbow, watching her fingers, the soft slow movements of which little by little wove a spell over his eyes. And once again the power of her beauty began to draw him beyond control. He felt a desire to seize her hands, to crush them in his. His eyes passed upward along her tapering wrists, the skin of which was like mother-of-pearl; upward along the arm to the shoulder--to her neck--to her deeply crimsoned cheeks--to the purity of her brow--to the purity of her eyes, the downcast lashes of which hid them like conscious fringes.