Barbara did not shrink back. She just
shook her head; and Harbinger flushed up.

"Why?" he asked; and as though the enormous injustice of that rejecting
gesture had suddenly struck him, he dropped her hand.

"Why?" he said again, sharply.

But the silence was only broken by the cheeping of sparrows outside the
round window, and the sound of the horse, Hal, munching the last morsel
of his carrot. Harbinger was aware in his every nerve of the sweetish,
slightly acrid, husky odour of the loosebox, mingling with the scent of
Barbara's hair and clothes. And rather miserably, he said for the third
time:

"Why?"

But folding her hands away behind her back she answered gently:

"My dear, how should I know why?"

She was calmly exposed to his embrace if he had only dared; but he did
not dare, and went back to the loose-box wall. Biting his finger, he
stared at her gloomily. She was stroking the muzzle of her horse; and
a sort of dry rage began whisking and rustling in his heart. She had
refused him--Harbinger! He had not known, had not suspected how much he
wanted her. How could there be anybody else for him, while that young,
calm, sweet-scented, smiling thing lived, to make his head go round, his
senses ache, and to fill his heart with longing! He seemed to himself at
that moment the most unhappy of all men.

"I shall not give you up," he muttered.

Barbara's answer was a smile, faintly curious, compassionate, yet almost
grateful, as if she had said:

"Thank you--who knows?"

And rather quickly, a yard or so apart, and talking of horses, they
returned to the house.

It was about noon, when, accompanied by Courtier, she rode forth.

The Sou-Westerly spell--a matter of three days--had given way before
radiant stillness; and merely to be alive was to feel emotion. At a
little stream running beside the moor under the wild stone man, the
riders stopped their horses, just to listen, and, inhale the day. The
far sweet chorus of life was tuned to a most delicate rhythm; not one of
those small mingled pipings of streams and the lazy air, of beasts, men;
birds, and bees, jarred out too harshly through the garment of sound
enwrapping the earth. It was noon--the still moment--but this hymn to
the sun, after his too long absence, never for a moment ceased to be
murmured. And the earth wore an under-robe of scent, delicious, very
finely woven of the young fern sap, heather buds; larch-trees not yet
odourless, gorse just go