"Your corn! you kept my corn!"

"Till it should bear. And your sh.e.l.l there--you've kept my sh.e.l.l."

"Till it should speak. And now--oh, see these things that have held our dreams for twenty years! The life is threshed from them for ever--they are only husks. They can hold our dreams no more. Oh, I can't go on dreaming by myself, I can't, it's no use. I thought my heart had learned to bear its dream alone, but the time comes when love in its beauty is too near to pain. There is more love than the single heart can bear. Good-by, my boy--good-by!"

"Helen! don't suffer so! oh, child, what are you doing?--"

"Letting my dear dreams go...it's no use, Peter..."

The millstones took them and crushed them.

She uttered a sharp cry....

His arm tightened round her. "What is it, child?" she heard him say.

She looked at him bewildered, and saw that he too was dazed. She looked into the gray-green eyes of a boy of twenty. She said in a voice of wonder, "Oh, my boy!" as he felt her soft hair.

"Such a fuss about an empty sh.e.l.l and a bit of dead wheat."

She hid her face on his jersey.

"You are a silly, aren't you?" said Peter. "I wish you'd look up."

Helen looked up, and they kissed each other for the first time.

I defy you now, Mistress Jennifer, to prove that your gra.s.sblade is greener than mine.

THIRD INTERLUDE

The girls now turned their attention to their neglected apples, varying this more serious business with comments on the story that had just been related.

Jessica: I should be glad to know, Jane, what you make of this matter.

Jane: Indeed, Jessica, it is difficult to make anything at all of matter so bewildering. For who could have divined reality to be the illusion and dreams the truth? so that by the light of their dreams the lovers in this tale mistook each other for that which they were not.

Martin: Who indeed, Mistress Jane, save students of human nature like yourselves?--who have doubtless long ago observed how men and women begin by filling a dim dream with a golden thing, such as youth, and end by putting a shining dream into a gray thing, such as age. And in the end it is all one, and lovers will see to the last in each other that which they loved at the first, since things are only what we dream them to be, as you have of course also observed.

Joscelyn: We have observed nothing of the sort, and if we dreamed at all we would dream of things exactly as they are, and never dream of mistaking age for youth. But we do not dream. Women are not given to dreams.

Martin: They are the fortunate s.e.x. Men are such incurable dreamers that they even dream women to be worse preys of the delusive habit than themselves. But I trust you found my story sufficiently wide-awake to keep you so.

Joscelyn: It did not make me yawn. Is this mill still to be found on the Sidlesham marshes?

Martin: It is where it was. But what sort of gold it grinds now, whether corn or dreams, or nothing, I cannot say. Yet such is the power of what has been that I think, were the stones set in motion, any right listener might hear what Helen and Peter once heard, and even more; for they would hear the tale of those lovers' journeys over the changing waters, and their return time and again to the unchanging plot of earth that kept their secrets. Until in the end they were together delivered up to the millstones which thresh the immortal grain from its mortal husk. But this was after long years of gladness and a life kept young by the child which each was always re-discovering in the other's heart.

Jennifer: Oh, I am glad they were glad. Do you know, I had begun to think they would not be.

Jessica: It was exactly so with me. For suppose Peter had never returned, or when he did she had found him dead in the tree?

Jane: And even after he returned and recovered, how nearly they were removed from ever understanding each other!

Joan: Oh, no, Jane! once they came together there could be no doubt of the understanding. As soon as Peter came back, I felt sure it would be all right.

Joyce: And I too, all along, was convinced the tale must end happily.

Martin: Strange! so was I. For Love, in his daily labors, is as swift in averting the nature of perils as he is deft in diverting the causes of misunderstanding. I know in fact of but one thing that would have foiled him.

Four of the Milkmaids: What then?

Martin: Had Helen not been given to dreams.

Not a word was said in the Apple-Orchard.

Joscelyn: It would have done her no harm had she not been, singer. Nor would your story have suffered, being, like all stories, a thing as important as thistledown. In either event, though Peter had perished, or misunderstood her for ever, it would not have concerned me a whit.

Or even in both events.

Jessica: Nor me.

Jane: Nor me.

Martin: Then farewell my story. A thing as important as thistledown is as unimportantly dismissed. And yonder in heaven the moon sulks at us through a cloud with a quarter of her eye, reproaching us for our peace-destroying chatter. It destroys our own no less than hers. To dream is forbidden, but at least let us sleep.

One by one the milkmaids settled in the gra.s.s and covered their faces with their hands, and went to sleep. But Jennifer remained where she was. She sat with downcast eyes, softly drawing the gra.s.sblade through and through her fingers, and the swing swayed a little like a branch moving in an imperceptible wind, and her breast heaved a little as though stirred with inaudible sighs. She sat so long like that that Martin knew she had forgotten he was beside her, and he quietly put out his hand to draw the gra.s.sblade from hers. But before he had even touched it he felt something fall upon his palm that was not rain or dew.

"Dear Mistress Jennifer," said Martin gently, "why do you weep?"

She shook her head, since there are times when the voice plays a girl false, and will not serve her.

"Is it," said Martin, "because the gra.s.s is not green enough?"

She nodded.

"Pray let me judge," entreated Martin, and took the gra.s.sblade from her fingers. Whereupon she put her face into her two hands, whispering:

"Master Pippin, Master Pippin, oh, Master Pippin."

"Let me judge," said Martin again, but in a whisper too.

Then Jennifer took her hands from her wet face, and looked at him with her wet eyes, and said with great braveness and much faltering:

"I will be nineteen in November."

At this Martin looked very grave, and he got down from the tree and walked to the end of the orchard full of thought. But when he turned there he found that she had stolen after him, and was standing near him hanging her head, yet watching him with deep anxiety.