"He would not if he had seen you this evening," replied her companion.
A deep flush, visible even in the moonlight, came into the girl's face. "Do not ask me to recite again," she pleaded; "I can not. You _must_ let me do what I feel is right."
"What is there wrong in reciting Shakspeare?"
"I do not know. But something comes over me at times, and I am almost swept away. I can not bear to think of the feeling."
"I don't believe you understand yourself; girls seldom do."
"Let me beg you not to fall into the power of that uncomfortable word, Annet. Walters says women of the world never use it. They never ask a single question."
"By observation," replied young Pronando, oracularly.
"It was Peboan, the winter! From his eyes the tears were flowing As from melting lakes the streamlets, And his body shrunk and dwindled As the shouting sun ascended; And the young man saw before him, On the hearth-stone of the wigwam, Where the fire had smoked and smouldered, Saw the earliest flower of spring-time, Saw the miskodeed in blossom. Thus it was that in that Northland Came the spring with all its splendor, All its birds and all its blossoms, All its flowers and leaves and grasses."
On this Northern border Spring came late--came late, but in splendor. She sent forward no couriers, no hints in the forest, no premonitions on the winds. All at once she was there herself. Not a shy maid, timid, pallid, hesitating, and turning back, but a full-blooming goddess and woman. One might almost say that she was not Spring at all, but Summer. The weeks called spring farther southward showed here but the shrinking and fading of winter. First the snow crumbled to fine dry grayish powder; then the ice grew porous and became honeycombed, and it was no longer safe to cross the Straits; then the first birds came; then the far-off smoke of a steamer could be seen above the point, and the village wakened. In the same day the winter went and the summer came.