neration lovers
might come and, looking on this strength and beauty, feel in their veins
the sap of the world. Here the laborer and his master, hearing the wind
in the branches and the water murmuring down, might for a brief minute
grasp the land's unchangeable wild majesty. And on the far side of that
little stream was a field of moon-colored flowers that had for Nedda a
strange fascination. Once the boy jumped across and brought her back a
handkerchief full. They were of two kinds: close to the water's edge the
marsh orchis, and farther back, a small marguerite. Out of this they
made a crown of the alternate flowers, and a girdle for her waist. That
was an evening of rare beauty, and warm enough already for an early
chafer to go blooming in the dusk. An evening when they wandered with
their arms round each other a long time, silent, stopping to listen to an
owl; stopping to point out each star coming so shyly up in the
gray-violet of the sky. And that was the evening when they had a strange
little quarrel, sudden as a white squall on a blue sea, or the tiff of
two birds shooting up in a swift spiral of attack and then--all over.
Would he come to-morrow to see her milking? He could not. Why? He could
not; he would be out. Ah! he never told her where he went; he never let
her come with him among the laborers like Sheila.

"I can't; I'm pledged not."

"Then you don't trust me!"

"Of course I trust you; but a promise is a promise. You oughtn't to ask
me, Nedda."

"No; but I would never have promised to keep anything from you."

"You don't understand."

"Oh! yes, I do. Love doesn't mean the same to you that it does to me."

"How do you know what it means to me?"

"I couldn't have a secret from you."

"Then you don't count honour."

"Honour only binds oneself!"

"What d'you mean by that?"

"I include you--you don't include me in yourself, that's all."

"I think you're very unjust. I was obliged to promise; it doesn't only
concern myself."

Then silent, motionless, a yard apart, they looked fiercely at each
other, their hearts stiff and sore, and in their brains no glimmer of
perception of anything but tragedy. What more tragic than to have come
out of an elysium of warm arms round each other, to this sudden
hostility! And the owl went on hooting, and the larches smelled sweet!
And all around was the same soft dusk wherein the flowers in her hair and
round her waist gleamed white! But for N