It was only for a breath or so that he had Ariel’s hands under his own, crushed down in the medley of spring flowers and damp earth. But the grace, the charm was not controlled by his will or his hold. It escaped without a flutter of struggle. It flowed up into the surprised lift of Ariel’s head, the rising of her eyelids, and spread a shimmer of green-gold light in the quickly widening pupils of her eyes, raised to his.
Suddenly he discovered, and she knew that he had discovered it, that she was trembling. What Ariel did not realize was that Hugh was trembling too, a little.
He released her hands. “I didn’t mean to hurt the flowers,” he muttered. “Sorry if I have.” And he commenced to help her in her sorting.
“I’m going to put these shortest-stemmed ones in a saucer,” Ariel explained. “Isn’t there something special, don’t you think, about little white and yellow violets? Secret and special? They sort of break my heart....”
He should hear how her voice didn’t tremble. She repeated the silly words to make sure that he heard how it didn’t: “They sort of break my heart.”
“Yes? Well, _spring_ sort of breaks _my_ heart,” Hugh responded.
Joan heard voices over toward Wild Acres. They came from the top of the wall which for half a mile or so shut off Holly’s well-kept grounds from the wildwood tangle of the neighboring estate. Although she was courting solitude this afternoon, or had intended to, Joan turned that way, out of curiosity, and in a minute or so four backs were presented to her. Persis, Nicky, their nurse, Alice, and Ariel Clare were all up on the wall, their legs swinging over on the Wild Acres side, their faces wildwood-tangleward, talking. Much overheard talk sounds like monkey chatter, when the words are indistinguishable, but not this of the two girls and the two children. With such inflections, such deliberate tranquillity, the gods might converse on Olympus. Joan drew nearer the beatitude of intercourse, walking softly on moist spring ground, ears beginning to catch the words.
The children sat between the two girls. It was Nicky speaking now, but with a manner of speech Joan had never heard him use before, unhurried and clear. So many imaginative and sensitive children, when speaking to an adult, or even to their own contemporaries, have a nervous, anxious note in their voices, from fear of interruption or misapprehension; and Nicky was no exception. But now it was different. Now he spoke with unruffled but expedient precision.