On the morning before Pauline's birthday Guy received a letter from Michael Fane announcing abruptly his engagement and adding that on account of worldly opposition he had been persuaded into a postponement of his marriage for two months. Guy was rather ironically amused by the serious manner in which Michael took so brief a delay, and he could not help thinking how unreasonably impatient of trifles people with ample private means often showed themselves. Michael wrote that he would like to spend some of his probation at Plashers Mead, and alluded to the "luck" of his friend in being so near his Pauline.

Guy wrote a letter of congratulation, and then he put Michael's news out of his mind in order to examine the two complete sets of the proofs on his poems which had also arrived that morning. He was engaged in the task of making a rather clumsy binding for them out of a piece of stained vellum when Richard Ford came round to Plashers Mead. Guy welcomed him gladly, for besides the personal attraction he felt towards this lean and silent engineer, he perceived in the likelihood of Richard's speedy marriage an earnest of his own. Somehow that marriage was going to break the spell of inactivity to which at the Rectory all seemed to be subject, and from which Guy was determined to keep Richard free, even if it were necessary to shake him as continuously as tired wanderers in the snow are shaken out of a dangerous sleep.

"I came round to consult with you about my present to Pauline to-morrow," said Richard, very solemnly. "I've brought round one or two little things, so that you could give me your advice."

"Why, of course I will," said Guy.

"They're down-stairs in the hall. I had some difficulty in explaining to your housekeeper that I wasn't a peddler."

In the hall was stacked a pile completely representative of the bazar: half a dozen shawls, the model of a temple, a carved table, some inlaid stools, every sort of typical Oriental gewgaw; in fact, an agglomeration that seemed to invite the smell of cheap incense for its effective display.

"Godbold drove them over," Richard explained, as he saw Guy's astonishment. "Now look here, what's the best present for Pauline? You see, I'm not at all an artistic sort of chap, and I don't want to hoick forward something that's going to be more of a nuisance than anything else."

"It's really awfully difficult to choose," said Guy, rather ambiguously.

Then he discovered a simple ivory paper-knife which he declared was just the thing, having the happy thought that he would not cut the set of proofs he was binding for Pauline, so that to-morrow Richard could have the pleasure of beholding his gift put to immediate use.

"You've chosen the smallest thing of the lot," said the disappointed donor. "You don't think a shawl as well?" he asked, holding up yards of gaudy material.

"Well, candidly, I think Pauline's too fair for that color scheme, don't you?"

"All right, the paper-knife. You don't mind if I leave these things here till Godbold can fetch them away, and ... er.... I wish you'd choose something for yourself. I've always taken a kind of interest in this house, don't you know, and I've often thought about it in India."

"I'd like a gong," said Guy at once, and Richard was obviously gratified by his quick choice, and still further gratified when Guy suggested they should sound it immediately outside the kitchen door. Solemnly Richard held it up in the passage, while Guy crashed forth a glorious clamor, at the summons of which Miss Peasey came rushing out.

"Good gracious!" she gasped. "I thought that dog Bob had jumped through the window."

"This is a present for us from India," Guy shouted.

"Oh, that's extremely handsome, isn't it? Well now, I shall expect you to be punctual in future for your meals. Dear me, yes, quite a variety, I'm sure, after that measly bell."

The gong was given a prominent position in the bare hall, and Guy invited Richard up to his own room. After the question of the presents had been solved Richard was shy and silent again, and Guy found it very hard to make conversation. Several times his visitor seemed on the point of getting something off his mind, but when he was given an opportunity for speech he never accepted it. Desperate for a topic, Guy showed him the proofs of the poems, and explained that he was binding them roughly as his present to Pauline to-morrow.

"That's something I can't understand," said Richard, intensely. "Writing! It beats me!"

"Bridges would beat me," said Guy.

Richard looked quite cheerful at this notion and under the influence of the encouragement he had received seemed at last on the point of getting out what he wanted to say, but he could manage nothing more confidential than a tug at his bristled fair mustache.

"When are you and Margaret going to be married?" Guy asked, abruptly, for, of course, he had guessed that it was Margaret's name which was continually on the tip of his tongue.

"By Jove! there you are! I'm rather stumped," said Richard, gloomily. "You see, the thing is ... well ... I suppose you know that when I started off to India last June year, Margaret and I were sort of engaged ... at least I was certainly engaged to her, only she hadn't absolutely made up her mind about me ... and, of course, that's just what you'd expect would happen to a chap like me ... dash it all! Hazlewood, I'm afraid to ask her again!"

"I don't think you need be," said Guy. "Of course we haven't discussed you, except very indirectly," he hastily added, "but I'm positive that Margaret is only waiting for you to ask her to marry her on some definite day; on some definite day, Ford, that's the great thing to remember."

"You mean I ought to say, 'Margaret, will you marry me on the twelfth of August, or the first of September? That's your notion, is it?"

Guy nodded.

"By gad! I'll ask her to-day," said Richard.

"And you'll be engaged to-morrow," Guy prophesied.

"When are you and Pauline going to be married?"

Guy looked up quickly to see if the solid Richard were laughing at him, but there was nothing in those steel-blue eyes except the most benevolent inquiry.

"That's the question," said Guy. "Writing is not quite such a certainty as bridge-building."

"You mean there's the difficulty of money? By Jove! that's bad luck, isn't it? Still, you know, I expect that having the good fortune to have Pauline in love with you.... Well, I expect, you've got to expect a bit of difficulty somewhere, you know. You know, Pauline was...." he stopped and blinked at the window.

"Pauline's awfully fond of you," Guy said, encouragingly.

"Hazlewood, that kid's been.... Well, I can't express myself, you know, but I'd.... Well, I really can't talk about her."

"I understand, though," said Guy. "Look here, you'll stay and have lunch with me, and then we can go across to the Rectory afterwards."

Emotional subjects were tacitly put on one side to talk of the birds and butterflies that one might expect to find round Wychford, of Miss Verney and Godbold and other local characters, or of the prospects of the cricket team that year. After lunch Guy put the unbound set of proofs in his pocket and, launching the canoe, they floated down to the Rectory paddock. Mrs. Grey and the girls were all in the garden picking purple tulips, and Guy, taking Pauline aside, told her on what momentous quest Richard was come, suggesting that he should occupy the Rector's attention, while Pauline lured away her mother and Monica.

The Rector was sitting in the library, hard at work rubbing the fluff from the anemone seeds with sand.

"And what can I do for you, sir?" he asked.

"I thought you'd like to see the proofs of my poems," said Guy.

He laid the duplicates on the dusty table, and tried to thank his patron for what he had done. The Rector waved a clay pipe deprecatingly.

"You must thank Constance ... you must thank my wife, if you thank anybody. But if I were you I shouldn't thank anybody till you find out for certain that she's done you a service," he recommended, with a twinkle.

Guy laughed.

"Worrall doesn't want to publish until the Autumn."

The Rector made a face.

"All that time to wait for the verdict?"

"Time seems particularly hostile to me," Guy said.

"You'll have to tweak his forelock pretty hard."

"That's what I've come to consult you about. Do you think I ought to go to Persia with Sir George Gascony? Mrs. Grey thought I oughtn't to take so drastic a step until I had first tested my poems in public. But I've been reading them through, and they don't somehow look quite as important in print as they did in manuscript. I can't help feeling that I ought to have a regular occupation. What do you really advise me to do, Mr. Grey?"

The Rector held up his arms in mock dismay.

"Gracious goodness me, don't implicate a poor country parson in such affairs! I can give you advice about flowers and I can pretend to give you advice about your soul, but about the world, no, no."

"I think perhaps I'll get some journalistic work in town," Guy suggested.

"Persia or journalism!" commented the Rector. "Well, well, they're both famous for fairy tales. I recommend journalism as being nearer at hand."

"Then I'll take your advice."

"Oh, dear me, you must not involve me in such a responsibility. Now, if you were a nice rational iris I would talk to you, but for a talented young man with his life before him I shouldn't even be a good quack. Come along, let's go out and look at the tulips."

"You will glance through my poems?" Guy asked, diffidently.

The Rector stood up and put his hand on the poet's shoulder.

"Of course I will, my dear boy, and you mustn't be deceived by the manner of that shy old boor, the Rector of Wychford. Do what you think you ought to do, and make my youngest daughter happy. We shall be having her birthday before we know where we are."

"It's to-morrow!"

"Is it indeed? May Day. Of course. I remember last year I managed to bloom Iris lorteti. But this year, no! That wet May destroyed Iris lorteti. A delicate creature. Rose and brown. A delicate, lovely creature."

Guy and the Rector pored over the tulips awhile, where in serried borders they displayed their somber sheen of amaranth and amethyst; then Guy strolled off to hear what was the news of Margaret and Richard. Pauline came flying to meet him down one of the long, straight garden paths.

"Darling, they are to be married early in August," she cried.

He caught her to him and kissed her, lest in the first poignant realization of other people's joy she might seem to be escaping from him utterly.

Guy had a few minutes with Margaret before he went home that evening, and they walked beside the tulip borders, she tall and dark and self-contained in the fading light, being strangely suited by association with such flowers.

"Dear Margaret," he said, "I want to tell you how tremendously I like Richard. Now that sounds patronizing. But I'm speaking quite humbly. These sort of Englishmen have been celebrated enough, perhaps, and lately there's been a tendency to laugh at them, but, my God! what is there on earth like the Richards of England? Margaret, you once very rightly reproved me for putting Pauline in a silver frame, do let me risk your anger and beg you never to put yourself in a silver frame from which to look out at Richard."

"You do rather understand me, don't you?" she said, offering him her hand.

"Help Pauline and me," he begged.

"Haven't I always helped you?"

"Not always, but you will now that you yourself are no longer uncertain about your future. The moment you find yourself perfectly happy you'll be longing for every one else to be the same."

"But how haven't I helped you?" she persisted.

"It would be difficult to explain in definite words. But I don't think my idea of your attitude towards us could have been entirely invented by my fancy."

"What attitude? What do you mean, Guy?"

He shook his head.

"My dear, if you aren't conscious of it, I'm certainly not going to attempt to put it into words and involve myself in such a net."

"How tantalizing you are!"

"No, I'm not. If you have the least inclination to think I may be right, then you know what I mean and you can do what I ask. If you haven't the least notion of what I mean, then it was all my fancy, and I'm certainly not going to give my baseless fancies away."

"This is all too cryptic," she murmured.

"Then let it remain undeciphered," he said, smiling; and he led the conversation more directly towards their marriage and the strangeness of the Rectory without Margaret.

Richard spent the night at Plashers Mead, and Guy heard the halting account of two years' uncertainty, of the bungalow that had been taken and embowered against Margaret's coming, and of the way in which his bridge had spanned not merely the river, but the very ocean, and even time itself.

Pauline's birthday morning was cloudless, and Guy, though to himself he was inclined to blame the action as weak, went to church and knelt beside her. Then afterwards there was the scene of breakfast on the lawn that already, with only this first repetition, wore for him an immemorial air, so that he could no longer imagine a May Day that was not thus inaugurated. The presentation of his poems in proof had not a bit less wonderful effect than he had hoped, for Pauline could never finish turning over the pages and loving the ludicrously tumble-down binding.

"Oh, it's so touching! I wish they could all be bound like this. And how I adore Richard's paper-knife."

The four lovers disappeared after breakfast to enjoy the flashing May Day, and Monica, left alone with her mother, looked a little sad, she, the only one of those three lovely daughters of the Rectory still undisturbed by the demands of the invading world.

May that year was like the fabled Spring of poets; and Guy and Pauline were left free to enjoy the passionate and merry month as perhaps never before had they enjoyed any season, not even that dreamed-away fortnight at Ladingford last year. They had ceased for a while with the engagement of Richard and Margaret to be the central figures of the Rectory, whether for blame or commendation, and, desiring nothing better than to be left without interference, they were lost in apple-blossom to every-day existence. Guy, with the prospect of his poems appearing in the Autumn, felt that he was justified in forgetting responsibilities and, having weathered the financial crisis of the March quarter, he had now nothing to worry him until Midsummer. That was the date he had fixed upon in his mind as suitable for making a determined attempt upon London. He had planned to shut up Plashers Mead and to take a small room in Chelsea, whence he would conquer in a few months the material obstacles that prevented their marriage. The poems, now that they were in print, seemed a less certain talisman to fame; but they would serve their purpose, indeed they had served their purpose already, for this long-secluded time would surely counterbalance the too easy victories of journalism. He would surely by now have lost that spruce Oxford cleverness, and might fairly expect to earn his living with dignity. The least success would justify his getting married, and Pauline would enjoy two years spent high in some London attic within the sound of chirping sparrows and the distant whispers of humanity. They would perhaps be able to afford to fly for magic weeks to Plashers Mead, pastoral interludes in that crowded life which lay ahead. How everything had resolved itself latterly, and how the gift of glorious May should be accepted as the intimate and dearest benefaction to their love! He and Pauline were together from earliest morn to the last minute of these rich and shadowy eves. They wreathed their boat with boughs of apple-blossom and went farther up the river than they had ever gone. The cuckoo was still in tune, and still the kingcups gilded all that hollow land; there was not yet the lush growth of weeds and reeds that indolent June would use to delay their dreaming progress; and still all the trees and all the hedges danced with that first sharp green of Spring, that cold and careless green of Spring.

Then when the hawthorn came into prodigal bloom, and all the rolling country broke in endless waves of blossom, Pauline in her muslin dress seemed like an airy joy sustained by all these multitudinous petals, dancing upon this flowery tide, this sweet foam of May.

"My flower, my sweet, are you indeed mortal?" he whispered.

The texture of her sleeve against his was less tangible than the light breeze that puffed idly from the south to where they sat enraptured upon the damasked English grass. Apple-blossom powdered her lap and starred her light-brown hair, and around them like a Circean perfume drowning the actual world hung the odorous thickets of hawthorn.

The month glided along until the time of ragged-robins came round again, and as if these flowers were positively of ill omen to Guy and Pauline, Mrs. Grey suddenly took it into her head again that they were seeing too much of each other.

"I said you could see Pauline every day," she told Guy. "But I did not say all day."

"But I shall be going away soon," he said; "and it seems a pity to lose any of this lovely month."

"I'm sure I'm right ... and I did not know you had really decided to go away.... I'm sure, yes, I'm positive I'm right.... Why don't you be more like Margaret and Richard?... They aren't together all day long ... no, not all day."

"But Pauline is so different from Margaret," Guy argued.

"Yes, I know ... that's the reason ... she is too impulsive.... Yes, it's much better not to be together all the time.... I'm glad you've settled to go to London ... then perhaps you can be married next year...."

A rule came into force again, and Guy began to feel the old exasperation against the curb upon youth's leisure. Rather unjustly he blamed Margaret, because he felt that the spectacle of her sedate affection made his for Pauline appear too wild, and Pauline herself beside Margaret seem completely distraught with love.

It pleased Guy rather, and yet in a way it rather annoyed him, that Michael Fane should choose this moment to announce his intention of spending some time at Plashers Mead. Perhaps a little of the doubt was visible in his welcome, because Michael asked rather anxiously if he were intruding upon the May idyll; Guy laughed off the slight awkwardness and asked why Michael had not yet managed to get married. They talked about the evils of procrastination, but Guy could not at all see that Michael had much to complain of in a postponement of merely two months. His friend, however, was evidently rather upset, and he could not resist expatiating a little on his own grief with what Guy thought was the petulance of the too fortunate man. The warm May nights lulled them both, and they used to pass pleasant evenings leaning over the stream while the bats and fern-owls flew across the face of the decrescent moon; yet for Guy all the beauty of the season was more than ever endowed with intolerable fugacity.

Pauline with Michael's arrival began to be moody again; would take no kind of interest in Michael's engagement; would only begin to see again the endless delays that hung so heavily round their marriage. Michael was not at all in the way, for he spent all the time writing to his lady-love, of whom he had told Guy really nothing; or he would sit in the lengthening grass of the orchard and read books of poetry, the pages of which used to wink with lucid reflection caught from the leaves of the fruit-trees overhead.

Guy looked over his shoulder and saw that he was reading "The Statue and the Bust":

So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
The glory dropped from their youth and love,
And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

"That poem haunts me," exclaimed Guy, with a shudder.

Where is the use of the lip's red charm,
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm—
Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
The earthly gift to an end divine?

"And yet I can't stop reading it," he sighed.

How do their spirits pass, I wonder,
Nights and days in the narrow room?
Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder
What a gift life was, ages ago,
Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

On this Summer morning the words wrote themselves in fire across his brain.

"They light the way to dusty death," he sputtered, over and over again, when he had left Browning to Michael and flung himself face downward in the orchard grass.

In despair of what a havoc time was making of their youth and their love, that very afternoon he begged Pauline to meet him again now in these dark nights of early Summer, now when soon he would be going away from her.

"Going away?" she echoed in alarm. "I suppose that's the result of your friend's visit."

Guy, however, was not going to surrender again, and he insisted that when a month had passed he would indeed be gone from Plashers Mead. It was nothing to do with Michael Fane; it was solely his own determination to put an end to his unprofitable dalliance.

"But your poems? I thought that when your poems were published everything would be all right."

"Oh, my poems," he scoffed. "They're valueless!"

"Guy!"

"They're mere decoration. They are trifles."

"I don't understand you."

"I care for nothing but to be married to you. For nothing, do you hear? Pauline, everything is to be subordinate to that. I would even write and beg my father to take me as a junior usher at Fox Hall for that. We must be married soon. I can't bear to see Richard and Margaret sailing along so calmly and quietly towards happiness."

In the end he persuaded her to make all sorts of opportunities to meet him when no one else knew they were together. Even once most recklessly on a warm and moonless night of May's languorous decline to June, he took her in the canoe far away up the river; and when they floated home dawn was already glistening on the banks and on the prow of their ghostly canoe. Through bird-song and rosy vapors she fled from him to her silent room, while he stood in a trance and counted each dewy footstep that with silver traceries marked her flight across the lawn.