HE (_not moving_). Yes.

SHE. Come here.

(_He obeys. She remains seated on the top rung of the stile._)

SHE. Frank!

HE (_by the side of her_). Well?

SHE (_in rather an anxious voice, and pointing across the field_).

What's that?

HE. A bull.

SHE. Oh!

HE. Well?

SHE. Frank, are you sure you didn't mean to laugh at me?

HE. Quite sure.

SHE. You apologise?

HE. As much as you like.

SHE. And you'll never oppose woman's independence?

HE. Never!

SHE. Then you may carry my poppies for me.

HE. And come home with you?

SHE. If you promise not to tease.

HE (_leaping over the stile_). I promise.

SHE (_following leisurely and glancing warily across the field_). And, Frank, dear, hadn't you better cover the poppies with your handkerchief----

HE. Why?

SHE. Oh, because--isn't it rather glary in the field? They might fade, you know.

On the Eve of the Regatta.

"'Why dost thou look so pale, my love?'

'I hear the raven, not the dove, And for the marriage peal, a knell.'"

"A year to-morrow since our wedding day."

He lounged opposite to her in a Canadian canoe, now talking, now soliloquising. Her eyes were closed, the fine pallor of her face, the steely lights of her dusky hair showed contrastingly against cushions of amber silk which propped her head. Grey was the background and green--grey with falling gauzes of twilight, green with luxuriance of leaf.a.ge in its emerald prime.

They had paddled to Shiplake at set of sun, starting from their house-boat, moored in Henley Reach, to return through the shady backwater, which coiled like a slumberous silver snake through the heart of a mossy lane. Here they lingered under a languishing tree--a very Narcissus pining over its own image in the water, and shedding subtle resinous odours of gum and sap upon the mellow air--determined to enjoy Nature in mood of most infinite peace. Time pa.s.sed unheeded, and silence, the euphonious silence of dual solitude, was only broken by the casual tw.a.n.g of lute strings, or the sudden enunciation of a half-modelled thought.

"A year to-morrow since our wedding day." His voice thrilled with love and tenderness, its tone caressed her ears, though her eyes remained closed.

"You have been happy, dearest?" he said, leaning forward and clasping one of her warm, white hands.

"Very happy."

"And had all you antic.i.p.ated?"

"All--more," she breathed, with opening eyelids, "you have been very good, very generous to me."

"Good? Can selfishness be mistaken for goodness? You said you loved fine dresses, it became my pleasure to choose you the finest in the world--you longed for jewels, and it was my pride to search for gems to match your beauty."

"I was very greedy--too greedy. I care less for such things now. Poverty makes one worldly, selfish, mercenary; don't you think so? I was so poor!--the very rustle of silk was music to my ears, and the l.u.s.tre of precious stones seemed to conjure majesty and beauty in a flash."

"And now you have nothing left to long for?" He bent over her hand and kissed it, and the little canoe, like a fairy c.o.c.kle, began suddenly to shake and dip in the swell of an unusual tide.

"Nothing, dear," she answered him, while her eye scanned the waves that had so strangely ruffled their nook. "I wonder if some launch is pa.s.sing to swell the river so?"

"Scarcely; that bend in the creek would save the wash from reaching us."

"But the water is agitated; look! it seems as though a high wind were raking the face of it." She gazed curiously up, and then down the backwater.

The trees were swaying with a soft unheard whisper of wind, and in the deepest shadow companies of gnats were playing hide-and-seek with each other. No sound but the hum of insect life reached them.

"It is strange," she went on, stretching her hand to the quaking water and withdrawing suddenly from the chill touch of it, "very strange; it looks as though the sleeping river had suddenly awoken."

"Dear little pottle of whims"--so he had christened her--"what new romance will she weave?"

"Oh, there is nothing romantic about that. If it were gra.s.s, the 'uncut hair of graves,' it would be different."

"Different! Is gra.s.s portentous? churchyard gra.s.s especially?"

"Every green blade of the earth must be 'churchyard gra.s.s' as you call it. It all springs up from life that was." She plucked a tuft from the bank as she spoke, and laid its moist blades in her lap.

"Then where's the omen?

"A silly one--an old Teutonic superst.i.tion. They believe that if the second husband of a woman treads the grave of the first, the gra.s.s will wave till the corpse awakes from its rest."

At this he chuckled joyously, her voice was so appropriately tragic.