He was not quite sane, thinking of that
morning's kiss, and of to-night under the apple tree. In such a spot
as this, fauns and dryads surely lived; nymphs, white as the crab-apple
blossom, retired within those trees; fauns, brown as the dead bracken,
with pointed ears, lay in wait for them. The cuckoos were still calling
when he woke, there was the sound of running water; but the sun had
couched behind the tor, the hillside was cool, and some rabbits had
come out. 'Tonight!' he thought. Just as from the earth everything was
pushing up, unfolding under the soft insistent fingers of an unseen
hand, so were his heart and senses being pushed, unfolded. He got up
and broke off a spray from a crab-apple tree. The buds were like
Megan--shell-like, rose-pink, wild, and fresh; and so, too, the opening
flowers, white, and wild; and touching. He put the spray into his coat.
And all the rush of the spring within him escaped in a triumphant sigh.
But the rabbits scurried away.
6
It was nearly eleven that night when Ashurst put down the pocket
"Odyssey" which for half an hour he had held in his hands without
reading, and slipped through the yard down to the orchard.
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