So the October days burned like a procession of golden flames passing

in magic sequence amid yellowing woods and over the brown and spongy

gold of salt meadows which had been sheared for stable bedding. And

everywhere over their land lay the dun-coloured velvet squares of

freshly ploughed fields awaiting unfragrant fertilizer and the autumn

rains.

The rains came heavily toward the end of October; and November was

grey and wet and rather warm. But open fires became necessary in the

house, and now they regularly reddened the twilight in library and

living-room when the early November dusk brought Athalie and Clive

indoors.

Hither they came, the fire-lit hearth their trysting place after they

had exchanged their rain-drenched clothes for something dry; and there

they curled up on the wide sofas and watched the swift darkness fall,

and the walls and ceiling redden.

It was an hour which Athalie had once read of as the "Children's Hour"

and now she understood better its charming significance. And she kept

it religiously, permitting herself to do nothing, and making Clive

defer anything he had to do, until after dinner. Then he might read

his paper or book, and she could take up her sewing if she chose, or

study, or play, or write the few letters that she cared to write.

Clive wrote no more, now. In this first year together they desired

each other only, indifferent to all else outside.

It was to her the magic year of fulfilment; to him an enchanted

interlude wherein only the girl beside him mattered.

Athalie sewed a great deal on odd, delicate, sheer materials where

narrowness and length ruled proportions, and where there seemed to be

required much lace and many little ribbons. Also she hummed to

herself as she sewed, singing under her breath endless airs which had

slipped into her head she scarce knew when or how.

An odd and fragrant freshness seemed to cling to her making her almost

absurdly youthful, as though she had suddenly dropped back to her

girlhood. Clive noticed it.

"You look about sixteen," he said.

"My heart is younger, dear."

"How young?"

"You know when it was born, don't you? Very well, it is as many days

old as I have been in love with you. Before that it was a muscle

capable merely of sturdy friendship."

One day a packet came from New York for her. It contained two rings,

one magnificent, the other a plain circlet. She kissed him rather

shyly, wore both that evening, but not again.

"I am not ashamed," she explained serenely. "Folkways are now a matter

of indifference to me. Civilisation must offer me a better argument

than it has offered hitherto before I resign to it my right in you, or

deny your right to me."




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