s she could
hear issuing the sweet bitt-music, whose vagaries even seemed designed
to startle from her a closer embracing--she was filled with a sort of
delicious impatience with everything that was not this perfect communing
with vigour.

Reaching the top, she put him into a gallop. With the wind furiously
assailing her face and throat, every muscle crisped; and all her blood
tingling--this was a very ecstasy of motion!

She reined in at the cairn whence she and Courtier had looked down at
the herds of ponies. It was the merest memory now, vague and a little
sweet, like the remembrance of some exceptional Spring day, when trees
seem to flower before your eyes, and in sheer wantonness exhale a scent
of lemons. The ponies were there still, and in distance the shining
sea. She sat thinking of nothing, but how good it was to be alive. The
fullness and sweetness of it all, the freedom and strength! Away to the
West over a lonely farm she could see two buzzard hawks hunting in
wide circles. She did not envy them--so happy was she, as happy as the
morning. And there came to her suddenly the true, the overmastering
longing of mountain tops.

"I must," she thought; "I simply must!"

Slipping off her horse she lay down on her back, and at once everything
was lost except the sky. Over her body, supported above solid earth by
the warm, soft heather, the wind skimmed without sound or touch. Her
spirit became one with that calm unimaginable freedom. Transported
beyond her own contentment, she no longer even knew whether she was
joyful.

The horse Hal, attempting to eat her sleeve, aroused her. She mounted
him, and rode down. Near home she took a short cut across a meadow,
through which flowed two thin bright streams, forming a delta full of
lingering 'milkmaids,' mauve marsh orchis, and yellow flags. From end to
end of this long meadow, so varied, so pied with trees and stones, and
flowers, and water, the last of the Spring was passing.

Some ponies, shyly curious of Barbara and her horse, stole up, and stood
at a safe distance, with their noses dubiously stretched out, swishing
their lean tails. And suddenly, far up, following their own music, two
cuckoos flew across, seeking the thorn-trees out on the moor. While
she was watching the arrowy birds, she caught sight of someone coming
towards her from a clump of beech-trees, and suddenly saw that it was
Mrs. Noel!

She rode forward, flushing. What dared she say? Could she sp