hing that small, rough hand with his mouth I Her shrinking
ceased suddenly; she seemed to tremble towards him. A sweet warmth
overtook Ashurst from top to toe. This slim maiden, so simple and fine
and pretty, was pleased, then, at the touch of his lips! And, yielding
to a swift impulse, he put his arms round her, pressed her to him, and
kissed her forehead. Then he was frightened--she went so pale, closing
her eyes, so that the long, dark lashes lay on her pale cheeks; her
hands, too, lay inert at her sides. The touch of her breast sent a
shiver through him. "Megan!" he sighed out, and let her go. In the
utter silence a blackbird shouted. Then the girl seized his hand, put it
to her cheek, her heart, her lips, kissed it passionately, and fled away
among the mossy trunks of the apple trees, till they hid her from him.

Ashurst sat down on a twisted old tree growing almost along the ground,
and, all throbbing and bewildered, gazed vacantly at the blossom which
had crowned her hair--those pink buds with one white open apple star.
What had he done? How had he let himself be thus stampeded by
beauty--pity--or--just the spring! He felt curiously happy, all the
same; happy and triumphant, with shivers running through his limbs, and a
vague alarm. This was the beginning of--what? The midges bit him, the
dancing gnats tried to fly into his mouth, and all the spring around him
seemed to grow more lovely and alive; the songs of the cuckoos and the
blackbirds, the laughter of the yaflies, the level-slanting sunlight, the
apple blossom which had crowned her head! He got up from the old trunk
and strode out of the orchard, wanting space, an open sky, to get on
terms with these new sensations. He made for the moor, and from an ash
tree in the hedge a magpie flew out to herald him.

Of man--at any age from five years on--who can say he has never been in
love? Ashurst had loved his partners at his dancing class; loved his
nursery governess; girls in school-holidays; perhaps never been quite out
of love, cherishing always some more or less remote admiration. But this
was different, not remote at all. Quite a new sensation; terribly
delightful, bringing a sense of completed manhood. To be holding in his
fingers such a wild flower, to be able to put it to his lips, and feel it
tremble with delight against them! What intoxication, and--embarrassment!
What to do with it--how meet her next time? His first caress had been