THE spire of Davos Church, so steep in pitch that even in mid-winter no snowflake could cling to it even for the moment’s space in which it could lie there and give consolidation to the next flake, was to-day no grayer than its surroundings. For weeks past the annual thaw had set in, and now the village itself and a couple of hundred feet of hillside above it were quite clear of snow. But spring was not behaving, so Hugh thought, as he sat on a pine-bole above the valley, in a Tennysonian manner. When the “last long streak of snow” fades, the “maze of quick” ought to bourgeon. What the “maze of quick” in terms of flower and leaf was he did not accurately know. But he was safe in saying that nothing of any description was bourgeoning. Nothing looked like bourgeoning, unless to bourgeon was to look flat and stale and dead.

Three months had gone since the glorious day when Peggy, Daisy, and he had passed the test for the English rink, and it was now mid-April. He had been down every morning to get a little skating, until a week ago, when the short grass below the last little patch of ice had begun to show through the surface he intended to skate on. But when that happened, it was no longer any use to pretend to Edith that he was going to skate, and should be on the rink the whole morning. For a time that excuse of enjoyable occupation had served, and often he had sat there, since the ice was unskateable, being decaying slush merely, in order to spend a few hours away from the house, in order to make her believe that he was still occupied. But when the ice finally vanished he had to make other reasons for his absence.

There was heart-break here; he longed only to be with her; she, on the other hand, longed only that he should be amusing himself, taking up the long hours of the increasing day in congenial pursuits. She, in pursuance of rÉgime, had to stop at Davos, take slow walks, and still lie out on the balcony, looking no longer at the exhilarating fields of snow, but at the brown, drowsy landscape of spring. She had often entreated him to go back to England for a few weeks to see his friends, to hear music, to take a little jaunt, a little holiday, as she called it, and as often he had clung to the fact that he really cared more about skating than anything else. That had done well enough till about a week ago; then she had observed that the rink was no more than a brown pasturage for abstemiously-minded cattle.

Other things—the big things—troubled him also. Doctors’ reports continued to be fairly satisfactory, and they told him that it was quite unreasonable to expect that the immensely rapid improvement which Edith had recorded in the winter could possibly keep up at that rate. That could not be. They did not say that she had gone back (that was satisfactory), but during the last three or four weeks she had not, frankly, gone forward. But that was quite normal—consumptives behaved like that. Also, he must remember that the spring, even for those in good health, was always a trying season of the year; those who were not in good health felt it much more acutely. There had been a great deal of south wind, too, lately—moist, relaxing, tiring. It was reasonable to hope and to expect that when the weather improved she would continue to improve also.

It was not bad news, nor anything like it, and Hugh realised as he sat on the red bole of the fallen pine, watching the blue smoke of his cigarette hang in the relaxed air, even as below him the smoke from the chimneys of the village stood in layers and lines above the houses, unable to disperse, that the fault had been his in expecting too rapid an improvement. But, indeed, he had secret cause for disquiet; though the disease, so he was professionally assured, had made no further inroads physically, it was becoming daily more trying to Edith. For two months or more in the past winter she had been extraordinarily serene and happy, content even, Hugh would have said. But for these last weeks—every fibre and nerve of him told him so—she had been engaged in a mental conflict fiercer than any physical struggle could be, more wearing, more incessant. She had hardly ever spoken of it to him; once or twice she had said, “Oh, Hughie, it is so hard to behave decently,” but her very reticence showed him how mortal the struggle was. Had it been less fierce she could have spoken of it. She was bitterly disappointed at this cessation in her own improvement; she had come to believe that she was going to have a miraculously rapid cure. And now the pendulum had swung the other way; instead of looking forward eagerly into the future it was all she could do to bear the present.

Hugh could guess how dreadful, too, was the disappointment, the despair she felt at being unable to rise above the discomfort and fatigue of the hours. She had hoped, so gallantly, that her mind, her soul, could remain a thing apart from the body, superior to it, looking down on it, as from a mountain-top one looks incuriously on the wreaths and snakes of fog below that cannot cloud the upper sunshine. She had expected the impossible; all that gallant womanhood could do she had done; as she said to Peggy, she would always do her best, and Hugh knew how excellent the best had been. But she, poor soul, mourned over it, upbraiding herself in that it was not perfect.

Again, it was found that Davos did not at all suit her baby, and a couple of months ago the boy had been sent back to England, to be in Peggy’s care. He had been ailing, too; it was nothing serious, but Edith was not in a state to be saddled with extra weight.

Oh, it was hard, and it was not the lightest part of the burden that had to be borne that fell on Hugh, though he did not know that. Often, again, as in the first weeks, his presence seemed merely to irritate Edith; he could see, with swelling throat that nearly choked him, how great the effort was to her sometimes to be courteous even to him. Hugh was no Christian Scientist, but in general terms he believed that disease was a work of the devil, and the devil (stupid fellow or not) hit upon some extraordinarily ingenious devices. He had, in fact, hit upon this one, that just because Edith so loved her husband, she found that it was he, of all the world, who tried her most. And all the time her real self was longing, even while her tongue, perhaps, was being acidly courteous, simply to weep out her heart on his breast, saying, “Hughie, Hughie, you understand, don’t you?” and find the perfection, the crown of her life there.

And he did understand; there lay the helpless pathos of it. A non-existent barrier separated them.

All the time, too, it was Hugh’s business to be cheerful, to be natural, and foolish, and boyish. That, again, was not easy, when, whatever he did or said, appeared “to be wrong.” And there was no respite; “the cheerful and contented spirit,” as Mr. Micawber said, “had to be kept up.”

And then, oases in the wilderness, sometimes a golden day fluttered down. Edith would be better, and, more than once, contrite, humbled to the dust, as she viewed the last week from some less tortured standpoint, she could only mutely plead his forgiveness. And there was nothing to forgive—nothing, at least, except the little insects, and Hugh had no more intention of forgiving them than of forgiving the devil for all the trouble he has made in this world, which would have been so pleasant if he had only died before we were born.

In these rifts in the clouds—one had come yesterday—there was no need for her to say, “I am horrible, but I am doing my best,” and no need for him to say, “I am stupid, but I am doing mine,” because they both utterly understood. Then, as on this morning, clouds would again, for some reason or other, drive over the face of the sun, and then when there was need for Edith to say just that word, she could not, could not! And, while silence starved her, Hugh had to whistle, or ask some absurd riddle to show he was quite cheerful and happy, thank you.

Hugh kept his depression and misgivings for such times as when he was alone; as soon as he set out from the house on a soi-disant skating errand, or, as to-day, to smell the pine-woods, since the skating excuse had broken down, he always found some companion of this nature waiting for him, like a faithful dog, outside the front door, eager for a walk. To-day the dog had kept very close to him, and now, as he sat on the fallen pine, it jumped up beside him, and thrust itself on his notice. It had always got some fresh fawning trick, and to-day it had a new one, a beauty. It was this.

Edith had begun to write the last act of her play, and Hugh’s faithful companion (this was its trick) made him remember with vital vividness the few words that had been said after he had read, now three months ago, the first two acts. Peggy, reasonable, cheerful Peggy, in the evening of that glorious day, had hoped that Andrew Robb would never finish it, for he was born of misery. And only two days ago Hugh had asked his wife whether Andrew Robb was writing still, whether he had come back to her. It appeared he had.

So the miserable spirit was in the house, holding her pen, uttering her thoughts. Was all beauty, then, all fine work born of misery? Was the “heavenly mind,” which, so rightly, he had attributed to Andrew Robb, active most when the soul was in travail, in trouble?

The sun was very warm to-day and the air windless. Hugh had had a nearly sleepless night; vague trouble had oppressed him through all the dark hours, vague while he looked it in the face, but real enough when drowsiness began to touch him on the shoulder or to tweak his blanket, so that, as often as he dozed, he was called back again. And now, in the same vague trouble, that which had tweaked and plucked at him during the night stood somewhere close by him. It would not do at all, and he sat up, banishing the drowsiness that his sleepless night had brought on him.

He had thrown away the end of his cigarette, and it had fallen into a clump of bilberries, and from the clump arose a little blue coil of smoke, twining lazily about the still air. Below lay the quiet Alpine village, brown and gray, with its lazy layer of smoke above it. Then close behind him came a flutter and scurry of wings, and a bird perched itself in a tree near him and gave three monotone whistles. Then it stopped; its love, its mate, did not answer. It could not go on alone. Some breath of wind in the upper air stirred, and the pine tops spoke of the sea to each other. All these things were drowsy, incomplete. They tried to be alive; the cigarette end tried to burn the bilberries; the pine-trees sighed for a real wind; the bird tried to sing, but did not find the stimulus. It was the hour, in fact, to him and all the world, when it is better, if possible, to go to sleep again till real morning comes. He had a sleepless night behind him, so, probably, he slept.

But he did not know that he slept; he only knew that drowsiness again gained on him, and he heard a step coming up the needle-strewn path below the pines, which seemed to wake him again into complete activity of consciousness. Then he saw, but strained his eyes at it, for he could not see distinctly, whose was the step. He did not know whether the figure was male or female; the face was bent down toward the earth as it approached him up the steep path, and he could not see it. Then, when it came close, it raised its head, and at that moment Hugh knew it more utterly than he knew himself, for it was Edith’s face. Yet, in the same moment, it was not her face, it was the face of a stranger, kind, wise, but inexorable. Then, though the mouth remained still, the eyes—Edith’s eyes—smiled at him, and then the lips said, “Du meine Seele, du mein Herz.” Then everything, figure and pine tree, Davos and sky, cigarette whorl of smoke, and smoke of the village “clicked.” And Hugh saw that they were all there except the figure that he had—dreamed.

He had understood about Edith before, about her irritation at him. He had seen it now. It became a little more real, a final turn of the screw had come to drive home what he knew. Of course, he had been asleep. But what did that matter? Truth and falsehood are in dreams, just as truth and falsehood are in waking hours. The truth may come through either; falsehood may come through either.

But the dream anyhow had banished the terrible companion that just now had sat on the pine-tree close to him, which for days and days had been that which made solitude lonely. It was Doubt; that at last was the name of the dog. He had never seen it, he had only imagined its presence. He had been afraid—the indefensible emotion, as Edith had once said to him. That and anger; there was no excuse for them.

But now he had seen or dreamed something that said he was her soul and her heart. Wonderful though it was, perhaps, indeed, because it was wonderful, it seemed incontestably true.

The path was steep, he ran and slipped down it, to be back at the hour for lunch.

“Yes, if you ask me,” said Hugh, half an hour later, “I won’t deceive you. I have been sitting in a pine-wood, and I never want to do anything nicer.”

It was a bad morning with Edith. She, too, had slept ill; she had heard from the doctor that she was not getting on. She had heard, too, something that she had not told Hugh, something that she had made the doctor promise not to tell him. And illness, weakness, fatigue combined together. Instead of saying, “Oh, how nice, do let us go there this afternoon,” she said—

“What a pity you did not take your lunch with you. Then you need not have come back here.”

Hugh contrasted the difference. If only she had said “we” instead of “you!” The non-existent wall rose swift and high between them. And he had to play his rÔle of cheerful insouciance.

“In which case,” he said, “I should not be lunching now with you. I like lunching with you, do you know?”

He caught her eye for a moment, and the soul behind it yearned toward him. But the devil, the insects, were potent.

“Won’t you like to go there again this afternoon?” she said. “Since the ice has gone there is really nowhere else for you to go. Do send Ferris up with the tea-basket. You can have tea there.”

Yet—how she tried, but how miserable she was! She knew, too, after her interview with the doctor this morning, why she found it all so difficult. But she did not want Hugh to know just yet. She would bear it alone for a little, though it was just this bearing it alone that was so hard. But she did so want him to have a few days more without this extra burden.

“Yes, do let us have tea there,” he said. “I should love to show you the place. Do come; it will be splendid if you will come.”

She shook her head.

“I don’t really feel up to it to-day,” she said.

“Oh, I am sorry!” said Hugh. “Poor darling.”

Edith gave a little impatient click with her tongue.

“Oh! how often have I told you that I can bear anything but pity,” she said.

They had finished lunch, and she got up as she spoke and stepped out on to the balcony where she usually lay. On her way she passed close by the back of Hugh’s chair, and longed—how she longed—to take that dear head in her arms, and just say, “Oh, don’t you understand, don’t you understand?” But she could not; just at this moment she could not raise her head above the bitter salt wave of misery that smothered and choked her.

Hugh sat a few moments longer at the table, finishing his cigarette. Perhaps it was that the reaction from that little dream he had had on the hillside that morning, which gave him such comfort, such consolation, had come; perhaps his instinct told him that there was some fresh disaster which he did not yet know; perhaps this was only the last straw, the little infinitesimal thing that made all the rest unbearable. Anyhow, as Edith went out, he felt his heart sink where it had never sunk before, into an abyss of misery down which he could not bear to look. He knew—that was the worst part of it almost—how horribly ill, how wretched, how weak Edith must be feeling to speak to him like that.

Well, he had to be cheerful, and he got up, calling to her.

“I shall go out then, dear, but I think I’ll come back for tea. It’s rather a steep climb for the tea-basket carrier.”

She did not answer, and he went out of the room. But in the hall he stopped. He was too sick at heart to walk; he was too sick at heart to do anything. Nothing seemed worth while; the thought of the hillside, of the clean pine odour, were hateful to him, the earth and the sky were all hateful. Yet—what else was there to do? He must go, after all; Edith must think he was tramping cheerfully through the woods. He had left his hat in his bedroom, and went there for it. But he could do no more. The breaking point came, and he broke. He threw himself down on his bed face downward and sobbed.

Edith heard him leave the room, and as the door shut she felt as if her own heart had been shut out from her, leaving just this tortured, miserable bundle of nerves and tissues which was her body. For her, too, this afternoon, it seemed that the unbearable had been reached, and the blackness of it consisted in the fact that it was her own fault. Why had she not taken that dear head in her arms a minute ago when she had the chance? Why had she not sent her pride, her stupid pride that revolted from pity—Hugh’s pity—to the devil, from whom it undoubtedly came? Why, too, was it allowed that Hugh, of all the people in the world, should have the power to make her like this?

She descended into lower depths; she told herself that she knew he was being hopelessly bored here, bored when he was with her, who was suffering so. Of course he refused to go to England, he could not well do otherwise, but surely he wanted to go. Or perhaps he did not much care; he was the sort of person who was happy and whistling everywhere. He had been extraordinarily cheerful all these months—his cheerfulness had seemed so effortless, too, that now, in this blackest hour she had ever known, she told herself it was effortless. He did not really care, she saw that now.

For one moment Edith turned off the flow of these meditations and asked herself if she was going mad or had gone mad. She decided, however, that she was only being clear-sighted and making discoveries. Yet somewhere, deep down in her, in spite of the darkness of this wave of misery that was going over her head and the deep waters that were drowning her, there burned a little flame by which she saw—at least an infinitesimal fraction of her saw—that she was thinking wild, wicked nonsense. But all the rest of her, her tired, tortured brain told her that she was thinking sense. And then that little flame went out too, and for the moment she believed it all.

And that was the true authentic hell, more real than any that theologian had invented. For she was quite alone; there was nobody here except herself.

The balcony where she had been lying ran round two sides of the house, and both drawing-room and dining room on this side, and Hugh’s bedroom on the other, opened on to it. She got up, alone in hell, and walked quietly up and down it once or twice. Then, to make her quarter-deck a little longer, she turned the corner and went by Hugh’s room. The window was wide open, and she saw him lying there face downward on his bed.

For the moment it was as if the devil and all his spirits tried to get in between her and him, and she stood on the threshold, unable, it seemed to herself, to take a step forward. He had not heard her; he had heard nothing for the last few minutes, poor soul, and she looked on his shaking shoulders with that wall of evil in between. And then, thank God, she marched straight through it, and she was not alone any more, there was no hell any more.

Then the scalding tears rose to her eyes, tears from which all self was banished; they were utterly for him, whom she loved so, whom in thought she had wronged so. Soon, no doubt, there would be shame and humiliation in them, but not yet.

She just said—

“Oh, Hughie, Hughie!” and fell on her knees by the bedside.

And like two children who have lost each other in some dismal, dark forest, when night is coming on, they found each other again. There was no need of any words at first. Edith did not ask him why he was crying, for she knew, and he did not ask why she had come to him, for he knew that he needed her. That was why she came.

Then soon, still kneeling there, she confessed to him all the blackness of her thoughts, and heard him tell her that it was not she. That was true, too. Hugh, anyhow, utterly believed it, and that was absolutely all that mattered.

But there was more still to tell, and though this morning Edith had planned not to tell Hugh yet, now she knew it to be impossible not to tell him. For had she known it then (she knew it now), it was not only her care and solicitude for him that bade her be silent, but also her pride, or what came nearest that, the same thing that ever and again through these weeks had made a gateless barrier between them, the same thing that had made her say that she could bear anything but pity. It was consistent with all that was fine and high about her that she should be intolerant of the pity of the world, of the pity of her friends even, of Peggy even, that she should hold her head up even when the worst hours were on her, and should be polite and considerate of her nurse, of her servants, of all who did not matter. But there was one pity which could not hurt—Hugh’s—and it was his right to know all she knew. She had better tell him now; there must never any more be concealment between them.

They had gone out on the balcony again, for she would not stop long in his room, and then she told him. The gray still world was round them, a gray still sky overhead; everything spoke of that moment of stagnation, when life, languid with winter, halts, unable yet to make the first effort of regeneration. But in her the effort of regeneration was made; as she told him she knew content, she knew that all that had happened, and all that might happen, all her own shortcomings and lapses of courage, were nothing, were unable to live or exist on the plane where Love dwelt, where she and Hugh dwelt. And she had thought (though now she had only an incredulous smile for the thought) that there had even been a barrier between him and her.

“There is more I have to say to you, dear,” she said, “but I have nothing to be ashamed of in this, for, indeed, it was not my fault. Hughie, there were things the doctor told me this morning which I asked him not to tell you. But I will tell you. Just this. My heart is weak; he does not recommend me to stop much longer here. The air is too stimulating.”

Hugh looked imploringly at her.

“But is it worse?” he said. “You told me it was rather weak. And yet the winter seemed to suit you so well.”

It was no use concealing things.

Then, deliberately, and of purpose, she turned round on her sofa and looked straight in front of her, away from him. By an unerring instinct she knew that he must be left alone with that a little while, till it became familiar to him. But as she looked out over the gray-brown fields below and across to the black pines of the hillside opposite there was nothing sad in her face. It was more than patient—it was content even, for nothing could stand against the alchemy of love which turned all to gold. Already it had turned her own meannesses and smallness to gold, to itself: this was far easier.

Then she felt Hugh’s head rest on hers, and she looked at him and smiled at him. And though his smile was tremulous and quivered, it was there.

“Yes?” he said.

“Well, Hughie, it is a difficulty,” she said. “These stupid lungs of mine want dry and exhilarating air, or they will strike, and this absurd heart of mine wants slack and languid air, where it doesn’t feel compelled to work so hard. And one doesn’t quite know where such air is to be found as will suit them both.”

Again she waited till this sank in: purposely she told all the worst first. What followed was rather better.

“Now, there is this chance,” she said, “that before winter comes again, when the air here is most stimulating, my lungs may be so much better that I can safely go to some much lower place—go to England even—and lead a very out-door life, and so give my heart a chance. But stopping here depends on how it behaves. If it goes from—from bad to worse, I shall have to go. On the other hand, perhaps it won’t, and perhaps my lungs will begin to get better again, so that I can go without hurting them. But that’s the situation. I am rather like a flying-fish that is supposed to die in the water and can’t live on the land. Isn’t it a nuisance? But it isn’t my fault, my darling. I asked him that. And he said I had been a model patient. There! Respect me, please!”

Oh, but Edith, the real Edith had come back to him! He had not known how dreadful the absence of this serenity, this big outlook, had been till it came back now, bigger, serener than ever. It was scarcely possible to be sad in the presence of that sunlit calm. His heart bowed down not in grief and regret, but in adoration. Bitter tears, no doubt, would come, and sorrow to heartrending, but not just now.

Edith paused a moment. In the autumn she had strung herself up to the highest optimism; she had been determined to get well, and looked in no other direction. She still wanted to, she still would leave undone no effort that could conduce to that; but the situation had changed. She had to regard another possibility; Hugh had to regard it, too. But the bitterness of it was already past, if they looked there together.

“But, supposing my heart does get worse, Hughie,” she said, “and in the interval my lungs don’t get better, what shall we do? I asked Dr. Harris what he recommended, and we talked quite openly about it. You see, it is one thing to be cured; it is quite another just to prolong life. He said something about a long sea voyage, but I asked if that was cure or prolongation. It was prolongation. Now, I hate the sea, and I hate ships, and I am sea-sick, and I can’t bear being cooped up. Do you think it is worth while? Personally I don’t, but if you do say so, and we will voyage madly round the earth for as long as you wish. If it meant cure I should insist on doing it for my sake; make no mistake about that. But if one is not going to get better, is it worth it? It is so dreadfully uncomfortable. Would you sit in a dentist’s chair for a minute if you knew that you were going to die as soon as you got up? I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t wish you to. I think it is cowardly to cling to life under outrageous conditions.”

Hugh hid his face in his hands a moment. The glory of the great calm still encompassed him.

“No,” he said at length, “I don’t think—ah, my heart, what do I think about it? Indeed, how can I settle? Do you see what you are asking me? Settle yourself, and I welcome it because you wish it.”

Edith gave a great sigh of relief.

“Ah, then, if I have to leave Davos,” she said, “let me go home, down to Mannington, and lie there and wait with all those things round us which have become part of us. May we? You said I might settle, Hugh. So we will.”

Edith knew there was more to say, that, in fact, which she had charged Peggy to tell Hugh in case she did not. And now—though the opportunity was there, though they were actually talking of this aspect of her illness—she did not. Now that the barrier, fictitious but seeming-solid, had been withdrawn, Hugh was so much her own again, none other’s. And she could not see him in any other setting, possessing and possessed by any other. Hers he was, hers by the inalienable right of love. Once and once again she tried to speak of that. But she could not. And since she could not she asked leave for this subject to withdraw.

“I have nothing else to say about it, dear Hughie,” she said, “because there is very little ever to say about anything that really matters—like—like that. I just wanted to know whether you would let me go home quietly, and live a little less long perhaps, and not want me to drag wearily about the world, living a life that is no life. It is so feeble, the mere continuance of life, if life means nothing except its mere continuance. What should we do on board a dreadful, swaying, heaving ship? And, ah, there is one thing more. Don’t give up your engagement in London next year, at any rate not at present. Supposing, by then, I want you very badly, and they think I shall not have you for long, I think then I should be selfish, and wish you to stop down there with me. I know I ask you nothing you do not want to give. But let us wait, let us see.”

She paused again, stroking his hair gently. The hair in question was very straight and wiry; there had been no end of trouble, she remembered now, in making it passable as Lohengrin’s. But he had looked so ridiculous in a crimped, flaxen wig. After all, though, it had done well enough.

“Now, Hughie, have you anything to say?” she asked. “If not, do let us leave this side of the future until such time comes as makes it necessary for us to look at it closer. We hope it won’t come, don’t we? but it is no longer any use to pretend it may not. So I shall count up to ten slowly, and if you don’t say anything till I have finished, you must hold your peace until—until things are much more serious.”

And, looking at him, she counted. At “six” she paused, for she could not get on. But it was not long before “seven” was said, and the other three numbers followed.

By the immutable laws that seem to govern fiction, they ought to have had a series of pathetic, heart-breaking, but soul-inspiring scenes during the next week. But they—this impossible hero and heroine—had nothing of the kind. Instead of the culminating poetry of sunset and evening star, they had the prose (but it was good prose) of midday. What had happened, what they knew might happen, did not make them in the least melodramatic, but instead it expunged the possibility of melodrama. For the melodramatist is self-conscious—he sees himself as he wishes to appear. Neither Hugh nor Edith wished to appear at all. They did not wish to take any part. But, like plain, simple people, they stood there hand in hand to take what God was sending them, simply and plainly.

They were happy too. It is not implied that they would not have wished things to be utterly different from what they were, but they faced the things that were. And it would have been much more strange if they had not been happy, for they had refused to admit life (the mere continuance of it) or death into the chamber of love. But all the little flower-like joys of the world, the small pleasures of sense, the common things of the day, were admitted there. It was still good to be hungry and have dinner, to be sleepy and go to bed, to smell the odour of the pines, to hear the whisper of the sea, to mark the timid uprising of the first crocuses of spring. All these little things found easy access to the hall of love, while death, mere death, chattered impotently on the threshold, and was told they were not at home.

Best of all, the wearing, transitional days between winter and spring passed, and the romance and perennial wonder of that renewal of Nature began to unfold itself before their enchanted eyes. The spirit of life which had lain dormant, hibernating through the winter like the soft, furry, bright-eyed creatures of the woods, began to stir and wake. A million crocuses were the opening of its eyes, and the smile on its mouth was the flush of green that came up in points of tender grass through the gray rubbish of the withered autumn. Birds knew that life was waking again, and preened themselves, thinking of the mating-time and the nests in the safe-swaying trees, and by night, in shadow of the woods, the shy beasts began to prowl again. The stir and whisper of spring broke the long silence of winter, and in the very sky itself, after the frozen brilliance of the frost, the white fleecy clouds seemed to rustle as they sailed across the blue, even as their shadows whispered as they passed over the earth. Spring entered into the hearts and brains of men, and schemes and new hopes awoke; they went more briskly about their business, and, as golden day succeeded golden day, Edith again made progress and fought more vigorously with her foe, and again did more than stay its advance, making it retreat.

Hugh’s birthday came on the last day of the month, and for the past fortnight during which she had been progressing favourably, she had racked her brain to think of a suitable present for him. She had also racked her brain to find reasons which would make him go to England for a few weeks, and see his friends, and refresh himself generally. She had tried many such without bringing conviction to him; she had told him that selfishly and for her own sake she longed for him to go to Mannington and see how it looked. Nobody else but he could bring her a real report of it, for he only, besides herself, knew what Mannington meant. Peggy sometimes wrote of it, but Peggy said it looked charming, and that the river was full, and that the beeches were beginning to come out. That was all futile; it did not mean anything. Then, again, one day Hugh had toothache, and she implored him just to run over to London and get his teeth looked at. Instead, with a rueful face indeed, he went down to the village and had the offending tooth pulled out by a cabinet-maker with a strong wrist.

But eventually she hit on a plan, combining his birthday present with a lure to lead him home, and wrote to Messrs. Thomas Cook, from whom, the day before his birthday, she received a small packet, in a neat green cloth cover, and she went through the contents. Yes, that was all right. First class Davos to Sargans, to Zurich, to BÂle, to Paris, to Calais or Boulogne (how thoughtful of Mr. Cook!), to Dover or Folkestone, to London. Also London to Mannington. And returns available for thirty days from date of issue. Only thirty? She had meant to say forty-five. He must start without any delay.

She slipped the packet into an envelope, sealed it, and wrote a little birthday inscription outside, directing that it was to be given him when he was called in the morning with his other letters. This was artful, for she herself did not appear till lunch; he would have had several hours to think about it in, with the hard, convincing sight of the tickets themselves before him. But the evening before she could not help alluding to the fact that she had a present for him.

“I couldn’t think of one for ever so long,” she said. “But I thought at last of the one thing you really wanted.”

“Oh, I want to guess; may I guess?”

“Yes, as long as you like, and I shall say ‘no’ whether you guess right or wrong.”

“Shall I like it?” asked Hugh.

Edith considered.

“Yes; very much indeed,” she said. “It will also be extremely good for you.”

“Anything to do with England?” asked Hugh with horrible acuteness. Edith had said before that a trip to England would do him good; also that he would like it.

“No, nothing whatever,” said she, with an unconcern that put him off the scent. And with that really solid lie to her credit in the book of doom, she retreated from the subject, masking her retreat by continued appeals to him to go away even if only for a week or two, until from her persistence on the subject it was no longer possible to suspect that her present had anything to do with England.

Before Edith went to bed, and after the picquet was finished, she and Hugh always had a little good-night talk. During those weeks of estrangement—for they seemed now no less than that—which had come to so abrupt an end a few weeks ago, it was the absence or, if attempted, the complete failure of the good-night talks that both had missed almost more than anything. Edith now alluded to those days with great frankness as my “devil-days,” which exactly expressed what she meant. To-night she announced that the good-night talk would be a few words only, for she was gloriously sleepy without being tired, an ideal state of things. The few words, however, were carefully directed toward the morrow. If things went on as she hoped they conceivably might, there would be no good-night talk to-morrow.

“Oh, I’ve had such a good day, Hughie,” she said, “and that makes three weeks of good days now; they have lasted longer than the devil-days, do you know? But the devil-days seemed longer. Think, April is all but over, and, ‘Oh, to be in England.’ Next April perhaps. But think; the daffodil weather, and all the daffodils in the copse looking like the sparkle of the sun on green water. Oh, why are you so selfish in stopping here when you might go back and look at them, and tell me about them. Poor Peggy! She once said that she liked double daffodils best. I prayed for her especially that night.”

Hugh laughed.

“But I like you best,” he said.

“That is why you ought to go back, since I wish it,” she said.

“And leave you alone?” he asked. “Not very likely.”

“No, I’m afraid it isn’t. I think, do you know, that I have a soured nature. I don’t want to have anybody else here. I want to have the pleasure of getting better again in the way I am doing, all to myself. Even if Peggy was here, even Peggy, I should have to share it with her. There’s a depth of depravity! And I don’t want to share it with you. I wish you would go away, and let me give you a surprise when you came back. That’s what I really want. I want you to walk up the path, after an absence, and say, ‘Hullo, who is this blooming young person? Why, it’s my wife!’ Hugh, it would be such awful fun! And now I am going to bed. The subject is closed. If you won’t go, you won’t. Good-night, my darling. Yes, the hand only, please, at a respectful distance.”

Edith was delighted with her diplomacy, and thought how clever she was as she went to bed. It was clear to her at once that the fact that she had said the subject was definitely dismissed had an effect on Hugh. Hitherto he had always dismissed it, feeling certain that she would re-open it. It had evidently made an impression on him to know that she would not. And to-morrow he would receive her present. Oh, it was a good chance!

He received his letters next morning as usual. His man dumped them down on his bed, and said it was half-past eight. And, as usual, Hugh said, “Oh, rot!” and felt for them. There happened to be only one, rather fat, and in his lazy morning manner he looked at the address before opening it. There it was, “For my dear Hugh on his birthday, with her best wishes. To be taken immediately.”

He tore open the envelope, which she had sealed with ingenious completeness, still not guessing. And then he saw the neat little green cover.

The servant was pouring out his bath.

“Oh, just leave it,” said Hugh, “and ask Mrs. Grainger’s maid to ask if I can see her a moment.”

This was ungrammatical, but intelligible. Edith’s plan had had only one defect, and that on the safe side. She had thought that he would think it over. But he only thought, and that instantaneously, of the good-night talk. And here was her present.

He put on a big fur coat that did duty as a dressinggown and went to her room.

Her breakfast was already come, and she was sitting up in bed, bright-eyed, refreshed with sleep.

“Oh, Hughie, how nice of you to come to see me early on your birthday!” she said.

“You wicked woman!” said Hugh.

“Why, for instance?”

“Because you hit below the belt. Because you appealed to sentiment last night. Because you knocked me down with that, and kick me this morning. It isn’t fair.”

Edith looked at him; her face was really troubled.

“Ah! tear them up, Hughie,” she said; “throw them away.”

He sat down on the end of her bed.

“I can’t,” he said. “You gave me them. I will go to-day. Oh, gladly too, lovingly; but it was rather a shock. I want to go now, as I see you want it, and have made it your birthday present to me. Thanks, thanks most awfully!”