"Timmie," she said, "let's circle round a little ways and come by where the big tent was. I want to see how it'll seem."
His ill-humour was gone in a moment.
"That's what we will do!" he cried joyously.
He walked beside her, his lantern swinging a little rug of brightness about their feet. So they passed the site of the big red ticket wagon, of the Eastern vaudeville, of the phototype tent; so they traversed the length where had stretched the great elliptical tent that had prisoned for them colour and music and life, as in a cup. And so at last they stepped along that green way of the pasture where underfoot lay the grass and the not infrequent moss and clover, not yet wholly trampled to dust; and this was where there had been assembled bright-winged birds of orange and flame and creatures of the wild from the Antipodes, and where Strange Things had closed them round.
The influence of what the pasture had seen must have been breathed on all who entered there that night: something of the immemorial freedom of bright birds in alien woods, of the ancestral kinship of the wild. For that tranquil meadow, long haunted of Jerseys and Guernseys and orioles, expressionless as the hills, dependable as a nurse, had that day known strange breath, strange tramplings, cries and trumpetings, music and colour and life and the beating of wild hearts—and was it not certain that these must change the humour of the place as the coming of the grotesque and the vast alters the humour of the mind? The field bore the semblance of a place exquisitely of the country and, here in the dark, it was inarticulate once more. But something was stirring there, something that swept away what had always been as a wind sweeps, something that caught up the heart of the boy as ancient voices stir in the blood.
Timothy cast down his lantern and gathered Liva Vesey in his arms. Her cheek lay against his shoulder and he lifted her face and kissed her, three times or four, with all the love that he bore her.
"Liva," he said, "all the time—every day—I've meant this. Did you mean it, too?"
She struggled a little from him, but when he would have let her go she stood still in his arms. And then he would have her words and "Did you?" he begged again. He could not hear what she said without bending close, close, and it was the sweeter for that.
"Oh, Timmie," she answered, "I don't know. I don't know if I did. But I do—now."