The newly leafing oaks were a shimmer of bronze-green
above her, while she trod on young ferns that formed a carpet such as
was never woven by hands. Into it were worked white star-flowers without
number, with an occasional nodding trillium. The faint, bitter scent of
green things too tender as yet to be pungent rose from everything she
crushed. She was not soothed by nature, like Thor Masterman. She had too
much to do with the raising of plants for sale to take much interest in
what the earth produced without money and without price. If it had not
been that her mind was as nearly as possible empty of thought, she
wouldn't have paused to watch an indigo-bunting, whose little brown mate
was probably near by, hop upward from branch to branch of a solitary
juniper, his body like a blue flower in the dark boughs, while he poured
forth a song that waxed louder as he mounted. She observed him idly and
passed onward because there was nothing but that to do.

Her heart was too dead to feel much emotion when she emerged on the spot
where she had been accustomed to keep her trysts with Claude. Her trysts
with Claude had been at night; she had other sorts of association with
this summit in the daytime. All her life she had been used to come here
berrying. Here she came, too, with Polly Wilson and other
girl-friends--when she had any--for strolls and gossiping. Here, too,
Jim Breen had made love to her, and Matt's companion of the grocery. The
spot being therefore not wholly dedicated to memories of Claude, she
could approach it calmly.

She sat down on the familiar seat that circled the oak-tree and gave the
best view over the pond. The oak-tree was the last and highest of the
wood. Beyond it there was only an upward-climbing fringe of grass,
starred with cinquefoil and wild strawberry--and then the precipice. It
was but a miniature precipice that broke to a miniature sea, but it gave
an impression of grandeur. Sitting on the bench, with one's head against
the oak, one could, if one chose, see nothing but sky and water. There
was nothing but sky and water and air. In the noon stillness there was
not even a boat on the lake nor a bird on the wing. The only sounds were
those of a hammering far over on the Thorley estate, the humming of an
electric car, which at this distance was no more disturbing than the
murmur of a bee, and the song of the indigo-bunting, fluted now from the
tree-top. To Rosie it was peace, peace without pleasure