It was Anne's birthday. It shone in mid-May like the front of June. Anne's bedroom was over Edith's and looked out on the garden. A little rain had fallen over night. Through the open window the day greeted her with a breath of flowers and earth; a day that came to her all golden, ripe and sweet from the south.

Her dressing-table was placed sideways from the window. Anne, fresh from her cold bath, in a white muslin gown, with her thick sleek hair coiled and burnished, sat before the looking-glass.

There was a knock at the door, not Nanna's bold awakening summons, but a shy and gentle sound. Her heart shook her voice as she responded.

"Is it permitted?" said Majendie.

"If you like," she answered quietly.

He presented his customary morning sacrifice of flowers. Hitherto he had not presumed so far as to bring it to her room. It waited for her decorously at breakfast time, beside her plate.

She took the flowers from him, acknowledged their fragrance by a quiver of her delicate nostrils, thanked him, and laid them on the dressing-table.

He seated himself on the window-sill, where he could see her with the day upon her. She noticed that he had brought with him, beside the flowers, a small oblong wooden box. He laid the box on his knee and covered it with his hand. He sat very still, looking at her as her firm white hands caressed her coiled hair into shape. Once she moved his flowers to find her comb, and laid them down again.

"Aren't you going to wear them?" he inquired anxiously.

Her upper lip lifted an instant, caught up, in its fashion, by the pretty play of the little sensitive amber mole. Two small white teeth showed and were hidden again. It was as if she had been about to smile, or to speak, and had thought better of it.

She took up the flowers and tried them, now at her breast, and now at her waist.

"Where shall I put them?" said she. "Here? Or here?"

"Just there."

She let them stay there in the hollow of her breast.

He laid the box on the dressing-table close to her hand where it searched for pins.

"I've brought you this," he said gently.

She smiled that divine and virgin smile of hers. Anne was big, but her smile was small and close and shy.

"You remembered my birthday?"

"Did you think I should forget?"

She opened the lid with cool unhurried fingers. Under the wrappings of tissue paper and cotton wool, a shape struck clear and firm and familiar to her touch. A sacred thrill ran through her as she felt there the presence of the holy thing, the symbol so dear and so desired that it was divined before seen.

She lifted from the box an old silver crucifix. It must have been the work of some craftsman whose art was pure and fine as the silver he had wrought in. But that was not what Anne saw. She had always found something painful and repellent in those crucifixes of wood which distort and deepen the lines of ivory, or in those of ivory which gives again the very pallor of human death. But the precious metal had somehow eternalised the symbol of the crucified body. She saw more than the torture, the exhaustion, the attenuation. Surely, on the closed eyelids there rested the glory and the peace of divine accomplishment?

She stood still, holding it in her hand and looking at it. Majendie stood still, also looking at her. He was not quite sure whether she were going to accept that gift, whether she would hesitate to take from his profane hands a thing so sacred and so supreme. He was aware that his fate somehow hung on her acceptance, and he waited in silence, lest a word should destroy the work of love in her.

Anne, too (when she could detach her mind from the crucifix), felt that the moment was decisive. To accept that gift, of all gifts, was to lay her spirit under obligation to him. It was more than a surrender of body, heart, or mind. It was to admit him to association with the unspeakably sacred acts of prayer and adoration.

If it were possible that that had been his desire; if he had meant his gift as a tribute, not to her only, but to the spirit of holiness in her; if, in short, he had been serious, then, indeed, she could not hesitate. For, if it were so, her prayer was answered.

She laid down the crucifix and turned to him. They searched each other with their eyes. She saw, without wholly understanding, the pain in his. He saw, also unintelligently, the austerity in hers.

"Are you not going to take it, then?" he said.

"I don't know. Do you realise that you are giving me a very sacred thing?"

"I do."

"And that I can't treat it as I would an ordinary present?"

He lowered his eyelids. "I didn't think you'd want to wear it in your hair, dear."

She was about to ask him what he did mean then; but some instinct held her, told her not to press the sign of grace too hard. She looked at him still more intently. His eyes had disconcerted and baffled her, but now she was sheltered by their lowered lids. Then she noticed for the first time that his face showed the marks of suffering. It was as if it had dropped suddenly the brilliant mask it wore for her, and given up its secret unaware. He had suffered so that he had not slept. It was plain to her in the droop of his eyelids, and in the drawn lines about his eyes and mouth and nostrils. She was touched with tenderness and pity, and a certain unintelligible awe. And she knew her hour. She knew that if she closed her heart now, it would never open to him. She knew that it was his hour as well as hers. She felt, reverently, that it was, above all, God's hour.

She laid her hand on her husband's gift, saying to herself that if she took that crucifix she would be taking him with it into the holy places of her heart.

"I will take it." Her voice came shy and inarticulate as a marriage vow.

"Thank you," he said.

He wondered if she would turn to him with some sign of tenderness, whether she would stoop to him and touch him with her hand or her lips; or whether she looked to him to offer the first caress.

She did nothing. It was as if her intentness, her concentration upon her holy purpose held her. While her soul did but turn to him in the darkness, it kept and would keep their hands and lips apart.

He divined that she was only half-won. But, though her body yet moved in its charmed inviolate circle, he felt dimly that the spiritual barrier was down.

She turned from him and went slowly to the door. He opened it and followed her. On the stairs she parted from him and went alone into his sister's bedroom.

Edith's spine had been hurting her in the night. She lay flat and exhausted, and the embrace of her loving arms was slow and frail.

Edith was what she called "dressed," and waiting for her sister-in-law. The little table by her bed was strewn with the presents she had bought and made for Anne. A birthday was a very serious affair for Edith. She was not content to buy (buying was nothing; anybody could buy); she must also make, and make beautifully. "I mayn't have any legs that can carry me," said Edith; "but I've hands and I will use them. If it wasn't for my hands I'd be nothing but a great lumbering, lazy mass of palpitating heart." But her making had become every year more and more expensive. Her beautiful, pitiful embroideries were paid for in bad nights. And at six o'clock that morning she had given her little dismal cry: "Oh, Nanna, Nanna, my beast of a spine is going to bother me to-day, and it's Anne's birthday!"

"And what else," said Nanna severely, "do you expect, Miss Edith?"

"I didn't expect this. I do believe it's getting worse."

"Worse?" Nanna was contemptuous. "It was worse on Master Walter's birthday last year."

(Last year she had made a waistcoat.)

"I can't think," moaned Edith, "why it's always bad on birthdays."

But however badly "it" might behave in the night, it was never permitted to destroy the spirit of the day.

Anne looked anxiously at the collapsed, exhausted figure in the bed.

"Yes," said Edith, having smiled at her sister-in-law with magnificent mendacity, "you may well look at me. You couldn't make yourself as flat as I am if you tried. There are two books for you, and a thingummy-jig, and a handkerchief to blow your dear nose with."

"Edie—"

"Do you like them?"

"Like them? Oh, you dear—"

"Why don't you have a birthday oftener? It makes you look so pretty, dear."

Anne's heart leaped. Edie's ways, her very words sometimes were like Walter's.

"Has Walter seen you?"

Anne's face became instantly solemn, but it was not sad.

"Edie," she said, "do you know what he has given me!"

"Yes," said Edith. Her eyes searched Anne's eyes with pain in them that was somehow akin to Walter's pain.

"She knows everything," thought Anne, "and it was her idea, then, not his."

"Edith," said she, "was it you who thought of it, or he?"

"I? Never. He didn't say a word about it. He just went and got it. He thought it all out by himself, poor dear."

"Can you think why he thought of it?"

"Yes," said Edith gravely, "I can. Can't you?"

Anne was silent.

"It's very simple. He wants you to trust him a little more, that's all."

Anne's mouth trembled, and she tightened it.

"Are you afraid of him?"

"Yes," she said, "I am."

"Because you think he isn't very spiritual?"

"Perhaps."

"Oh, but he's on his way there," said Edith. "He's human. You've got to be human before you can be spiritual. It's a most important part of the process. Don't you omit it."

"Have I omitted it?"

She stroked one of the thin hands that were out-stretched towards her on the coverlet, and the other closed on her caress. The touch brought the tears into her eyes. She raised her head to keep them from falling.

"Dear," said Edith, and paused and reiterated, "dear, you have about all the big things that I haven't. You're splendid. There's only one thing I want for you. If you could only see how divinely sacred the human part of us is—and how pathetic."

Anne looked at her as she lay there, bright and brave, untroubled by her own mortal pathos. In her, humanity, woman's humanity, was reduced to its simplest expression of spiritual loving and bodily suffering. Anne was a child in her ignorance of the things that had been revealed to Edith lying there.

Looking at her, Anne's tears grew heavy and fell.

"It's your birthday," said Edith softly.

And as she heard Majendie's foot on the stairs Anne dried her eyes on the birthday pocket handkerchief.

"Here she is," said Edith as he entered. "What are you going to do with her? She doesn't have a birthday every day."

"I'm going," he said, "to take her down to breakfast."

Their meals so abounded in occasions for courtesy that they had become profoundly formal. This morning Anne's courtesy was coloured by some emotion that defied analysis. She wore her new mood like a soft veil that heightened her attraction in obscuring it.

He watched her with a baffled preoccupation that kept him unusually quiet. His quietness did him good service with Anne in her new mood.

When the meal was over she rose and went to the window. The sedate Georgian street was full of the day that shone soberly here from the cool clear north.

"What are you thinking of?" said he.

"I'm thinking what a beautiful day it is."

"Yes, isn't it a jolly day?"

"If it's beautiful here, what must it be in the country?"

"The country?" A thought struck him. "I say, would you like to go there?"

"Do you mean to-day?"

Her upper lip lifted, and the two teeth showed again on the pale rose of its twin. In spite of the dignity of her proportions, Anne had the look of a child contemplating some hardly permissible delight.

"Now, this minute. There's a train to Westleydale at nine fifty."

"It would be very nice. But—how about business?"

"Business be—"

"No, no, not that word."

"But it is, you know; it can't help itself. There's a devil in all the offices in Scale at this time of the year."

"Would you like it?"

"I? Rather. I'm on!"

"But—Edith—oh no, we can't."

She turned with a sudden gesture of renunciation, so that she faced him where he stood smiling at her. His face grew grave for her.

"Look here," he said, "you mustn't be morbid about Edith. It isn't necessary. All the time we're gone, she'll be there, in perfect bliss with simply thinking of the good time we're having."

"But her back's bad to-day."

"Then she'll be glad that we're not there to feel it. Her back will add to her happiness, if anything."

She drew in a sharp breath, as if he had hurt her.

"Oh, Walter, how can you?"

He replied with emphasis. "How can I? I can, not because I'm a brute, as you seem to suppose, but because she's a saint and an angel. I take off my hat and go down on my knees when I think of her. Go and put your hat on."

She felt herself diminished, humbled, and in two ways. It was as if he had said: "You are not the saint that Edith is, nor yet the connoisseur in saintship that I am."

She knew that she was not the one; but to the other distinction she certainly fancied that she had the superior claim. And she had never yet come behind him in appreciation of Edith. Besides, she was hurt at being spoken to in that way on her birthday.

Her resentment faded when she found him standing at the foot of the stairs by Edith's door, waiting for her. He looked up at her as she descended, and his eyes brightened with pleasure at the sight.

Edith was charmed with their plan. It might have been conceived as an exquisite favour to herself, by the fine style in which she handled it.

They set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket and Anne's coat. He had changed, and appeared in the Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and cap he had worn at Scarby. The pang that struck her at the sight of them was softened by her practical perception of their fitness for the adventure. They became him, too, and she had memory of the charm he had once worn for her with that open-air attire.

An hour's journey by rail brought them to the little wayside station. They turned off the high road, walked for ten minutes across an upland field, and came to the bridle-path that led down into the beech-woods of Westleydale, in the heart of the hills.

They followed a mossy trail. The shade fell thin, warm, and coloured, from leaves so tender that the light passed through their half-transparent panes. Overhead there was the delicate scent of green things and of sap, and underfoot the deep smell of moss and moistened earth.

Anne drew the deep breath of delight. She took off her hat and gloves, and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the vivid light received her. Majendie hung back to look at her. She turned and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. She threw back her head, as if her white throat drank the sweet air like wine. She held out her white hands, and let the warmth play over them palpably as a touch.

And Majendie longed to take her by those white hands and draw her to him. If he could have trusted her; but some instinct plucked him backward, saying to him: "Not yet."

A mossy rise under a beech-tree offered itself to Anne as a suitable throne for the regal woman that she was. He spread out her coat, and she made room for him beside her. He sat for a long time without speaking. The powers which were working that day for Majendie gave to him that subtle silence. He had, at most times, an inexhaustible capacity for keeping still.

Above them, just discernible through the tree-tops, veiled by a gauze of dazzling air, the hill brooded in its majestic dream. Its green arms, plunging to the valley, gathered them and shut them in.

Majendie's figure was not diminished by the background. The smallest nervous movement on his part would have undone him, but he did not move. His profound stillness, suggesting an interminable patience, gave him a beautiful immensity of his own.

Anne, left in her charmed, inviolate circle, surrendered sweetly to the spirit of Westleydale.

The place was peace folded upon the breast of peace.

Presently she spoke, calling his name, as if out of the far-off unutterable peace.

"Walter, it was kind of you to bring me here."

"I am so glad you like it."

"I do indeed."

He tried to say more, but his heart choked him.

She closed her eyes, and the peace poured over her, and sank in. Her heart beat quietly.

She opened her eyes and turned them on her husband. She knew that it was his gaze that had compelled them to open. She smiled to herself, like a young girl, shyly but happily aware of him, and turned from him to her contemplation of the woods.

Anne had always rather prided herself on her susceptibility to the beauty of nature, but it had never before reached her with this poignant touch. Hitherto she had drawn it in with her eyes only; now it penetrated her through every nerve. She was vaguely but deliciously aware of her own body as a part of it, and of her husband's joy in contemplating her.

"He thinks me good-looking," she said to herself, and the thought came to her as a revelation.

Then her young memory woke again and thrust at her.

"He thinks me good-looking. That's why he married me."

She longed to find out if it were so.

"Walter," said she, "I want to ask you a question."

"Well—if it's an easy one."

"It isn't—very. What made you want to marry me?"

He paused a moment, searching for the truth.

"Your goodness."

"Is that really true?"

"To the best of my belief, madam, it is."

"But there are so many other women better than me."

"Possibly. I haven't been happy enough to meet them."

"And if you had met them?"

"As far as I can make out, I shouldn't have fallen in love with them. I shouldn't have fallen in love with you, if it hadn't been for your goodness. But I shouldn't have fallen in love with your goodness in any other woman."

"Have you known many other women?"

"One way and another, in the course of my life—yes. And what I liked so much about you was your difference from those other women. You gave me rest from them and their ways. They bored me even when I was half in love with them, and made me restless for them even when I wasn't a little bit. It was as if they were always expecting something from me—I couldn't for the life of me tell what—always on the look out, don't you know, for some mysterious moment that never arrived."

She thought she knew. She felt that he was describing vaguely and with incomparable innocence the approaches of the ladies who had once designed to marry him. He had never seen through them; they (and they must have been so obvious, those ladies) had remained for him inscrutable, mysterious. He could deal competently with effects, but he was not clever at assigning causes.

He seemed conscious of her reflections. "They were quite nice, don't you know. Only they couldn't let you alone. You let me alone so perfectly. Being with you was peace."

"I see," she said quietly. "It was peace. That was all."

"Oh, was it? That was only the beginning, if you must know how it began."

"It began," she murmured, "in peace. That was what struck you most in me. I must have seemed to you at peace, then."

"You did—you did. Weren't you?"

"I must have been. But I've forgotten. It's so long ago. There's peace here, though. Why didn't we choose this place instead of Scarby?"

"I wish we had. I say—are you never going to forget that?"

"I've forgiven it. I might forget it if I could only understand."

"Understand what?"

"How you could be capable of caring for me—like that—and yet—"

"But the two things are so entirely different. It's impossible to explain to you how different. Heaven forbid that you should understand the difference."

"I understand enough to know—"

"You understand enough to know nothing. You must simply take my word for it. Besides, the one thing's an old thing, over and done with."

"Over and done with. But if the two things are so different, how can you be sure?"

"That sounds awfully clever of you, but I'm hanged if I know what you mean."

"I mean, how can you tell that it—the old thing—never would come back?"

It was clever of her. He realised that he had to deal now with a more complete and complex creature than Anne had been.

"How could it?" he asked.

"If she came back—"

"Never. And if it did—"

"Ah, if it did—"

"It couldn't in this case—my case—your case—"

"Her case—" she whispered.

"Her case? She hasn't got one. She simply doesn't exist. She might come back as much as she pleased, and still she wouldn't exist. Is that what you've been afraid of all the time?"

"I never was really afraid till now."

"What you're afraid of couldn't happen. You can put that out of your head for ever. If I could mention you in the same sentence as that woman you should know why I am so certain. As it is, I must ask you again to take my word for it."

He paused.

"But, since you have raised the question—and it's interesting, too—I knew a man once—not a 'bad' man—to whom that very thing did happen. And it didn't mean that he'd left off caring for his wife. On the contrary, he was still insanely fond of her."

"What did it mean, then?"

"That she'd left off showing that she cared for him. And he cared more for her, that man, after having left her, than he did before. In its way it was a sort of test."

"I pray heaven—" said Anne; but she was too greatly shocked by the anecdote to shape her prayer.

Majendie, feeling that the time, the place, and her mood were propitious for the exposition, went on.

"There's another man I know. He was very fond of Edie. He's fond of her still. He'll come and sit for hours playing backgammon with her. And yet all his fondness for her hasn't kept him entirely straight. But he'd have been as straight as anybody if he could have married her."

"But what does all this prove?"

"It proves nothing," he said almost passionately, "except that these two things, just because they're different, are not so incompatible as you seem to think."

"Did Edie care for that man?"

"I believe so."

"Ah, don't you see? There's the difference. What made Edie a saint made him a sinner."

"I doubt if Edie would look on it quite in that light. She thinks it was uncommonly hard on him."

"Does she know?"

"Oh, there's no end to the things that Edie knows."

"And she loves him in spite of it?"

"Yes. I suppose there's no end to that either."

No end to her loving. That was the secret, then, of Edie's peace.

Anne meditated upon that, and when she spoke again her voice rang on its vibrating, sub-passionate note.

"And you said that I gave you rest. You were different."

He made as if he would draw nearer to her, and refrained. The kind heart of Nature was in league with his. Nature, having foreknowledge of her own hour, warned him that his hour was not yet.

And so he waited, while Nature, mindful of her purpose, began in Anne Majendie her holy, beneficent work. The soul of the place was charged with memories, with presciences, with prophecies. A thousand woodland influences, tender timidities, shy assurances, wooed her from her soul. They pleaded sweetly, persistently, till Anne's brooding face wore the flush of surrender to the mysteries of earth.

The spell was broken by a squirrel's scurrying flight in the boughs above them. Anne looked up, and laughed, and their moment passed them by.