HE daisies danced towards her on their slender stems, and the grasses were twining in her golden hair, as she lay in the open meadow nodding at the sun; and I, with all my fears upon my face and a mad impulse in my heart, stole to her gently from the wicket. She stirred a little as I stayed beside her, stooping softly lower, and the small shadows of the sky fled in snatches across her sleeping face. At that moment, though her tremulous eyes are ever the light of my dim pathway, I dreaded lest they should open upon me and my shameful errand. So still she lay, dreaming like moonlight upon the fragrant bank, that I could have thought it but the of my love, so quietly recumbent. It seemed to me now as though Death, mistaken in his rounds, had come to the call of Sleep, and sat close, watching even as I. The cricket chirruped in the high summer noon, and bending nearer still I heard the long field rustling in a single wave, drowning her softer breath. Then, as my lips dropped lower, came a still hush; the colour quickened in her cheeks to the race of my own desperate blood, and lifting her lashes she looked up at me.
I fell back in abasement with no words ready to my use, and starting she drew her lissom body to its full stature, gazing with surprise upon me at her feet.
'What did this mean?' she asked, her face suffusing swiftly with a delicate red.
'The sun,' I stammered, 'was too hot upon your face; and a spider'
She swept from me with a gesture, 'I thought,' she said, 'at least you were a gentleman.'
'It has always been my intention to be such,' I murmured in reply.
'You have put off the experiment too long,' said she with much disdain.
'Do you not think,' said I, rising, 'that in some circumstances gentility were Quixotic?'
'There is nothing more ultimate than honour,' she answered indignantly. 'It is an element in itself, and while our sex leans on yours you have plain duties.'
'I have thought of honour,' said I, 'but I find it a mere straw against you. We have plain duties,' I said; 'what rights have we?'
'You have,' she said, flashing at me, 'at least the right to your own company, as I to mine.'
She turned and made from me with the appearance of great dignity across the meadow slowly. I saw her moving for the wood in the full sunlight, her white skirts tossing over the grasses, her head erect and wonderful. At rest or in life she was my final law, not honour. Leaping from the bank I sped swiftly upon her. At my approach she paused and thrust her chin a trifle from me.
'I see, sir," she said, with a quiver of her exquisite nostrils, 'that you will take no instruction upon the point of honour.'
'You forget,' said I, stilling my heart to be cool, and now timorous in her presence. 'There is but one passage from this field.'
'Perhaps, then, you will proceed, sir,' she replied, flinging her hand towards the wood.
'Nay,' said I boldly, 'I were better behind.'
'At a distance,' she cried quickly.
'At some distance,' I assented.
She bowed and went forward, and her fine grace caught away my breath, so that I stood gazing till she vanished through the wicket; then waking to find the heaven dark I rushed after her. The wood, obscurer at the outset, grew lighter as I advanced, and presently I saw her at a bend in the path picking her way over fallen branches. Hastening, I left so much space between us as suffered her to pass but rarely from my sight, and when an angle hid her I made upon her a few steps. Thus drawing through the brake we came out upon a clear, straight reach, down which I saw her flitting from the vista. And now the horrible remoteness of this passage was grown a dire torture to me, and with no thought but the one I bore down upon her speedily. Turning, she confronted me in an angry blaze, and my heart trembled at her warring eyes. The lips curled as they parted in scorn of me, but waveringly I broke in ere she spoke.
'I would have passed you,' I stuttered, 'being under the press of an engagement I had forgotten. But your hair—at the distance'
She put her hand to her golden locks, and flushed at the touch.
'I thank you," she said with some confusion. 'The grass has set it in disorder.'
At her embarrassment I was emboldened.
'It would have shortly fallen in a shower,' I explained with calmness.
'I am obliged to your courtesy,' she answered with her flush. 'It is not pleasant to pass for a spectacle.'
'I take some credit for my self-denial,' said I, 'for with that streaming gold before me this journey had been something more tolerable.'
'You are very good,' she murmured, and moved on, leaving me to gaze after her with wistful eyes.