What was she to him? In triple voice he had the answer, demanding his acknowledgment, clamouring for his recognition. By a single word he signed the bond. None was by to listen, and yet he flushed; there was none to overhear, and yet he spoke scarcely above a whisper. He just breathed her name--"Dora!"
An intense stillness came about him. He stood enraptured, all his senses thrilled. Out of the stillness, echo of his whisper, seemed to come her name of Dora! Dora! Dora! floating about him as petals from the bloomy rose. He raised his face to their caress and was caught up in sudden ecstasy--believed he was with her, touching her; and saw and felt her stoop towards him, bringing her perfume to him as the may-tree stoops and sheds its fragrance when first at dawn the morning breathes in spring.
So for a space he stood etherealised--awed and atremble; youth brought suddenly through the gates and into the courts of love where the strong air at every tremulous breath runs like wine to the brain, to the heart like some quick essence. For a space he stood so; then was aware that old friend wind was up again and drumming Ha! Ha! Ha! upon his ears as one that mocks.
What was she to him? The answer, now he had it, stirred to wilder tumult the feelings that had brought him turbulently breasting up the Ridge. He looked again towards "Post Offic," toylike below, and had no tender thought for it--bitter vexation instead, as of the captive who goes to fury at the chains that bind him.
That he should submit to be thus chained, thus apron-stringed! That Dora should laugh! That she should know him idler! Goading thoughts--maddening thoughts, and he flung himself, bruising himself, against them as the captive against his prison walls. That she should laugh! It should not be! It was not to be endured! He threw up his head in determination's action, his hands clenched, his body braced, resolve upon his angry brow.
Ha! Ha! Ha! drummed old friend wind--Ha! Ha! Ha!
He gave a half cry and turned and strode away along the Ridge, taking the direction that led him from home, and exerting himself under new impulse of the desire to rebuke his body and haply ease his mind.
An hour at that pace brought him above Great Letham, clustered below. He paused irresolutely. From among the roofs, as it were, a crawling train emerged. He watched it worm its way along the eastward vale, then abruptly turned his back upon it as upon a thing more fortunate than he--not bound down here, as he was bound. Brooding upon the landscape, he suddenly became aware of a thin wisp of smoke that pointed up like a grey finger from the valley beneath him. It mounted in a steady, wand-like line from the belt of trees that marked Fir-Tree Pool, and its site and its appearance braced him to an alert attention. It had signalled him before. Only one person he had ever known lit a fire down there: only one hand in his experience contrived a flame which gave quite that steady, grey finger. He remembered Japhra showing him how to get the heart of a fire concentrated in a compact centre; he remembered Ima laughing at the sprawling heap, burning in desultory patches, that had come of his first attempt at imitation.