“Have you _ever_ in your life tasted such onion soup?” she murmured after a minute of rather stunned silence on Hugh’s part. “How old is she, by the way? To become a dancer one should start very young.” “Ariel, you mean? Yes, the soup is very good. She’s twenty to-day. It’s her birthday.” As Hugh said this, Ariel caught sight of him for the first time, and smiled up at the balcony. He bowed to her, and his own smile was rather constrained. But he felt that a finger of sunshine had suddenly traversed his heart. He said again, not realizing that he was repeating himself, “To-day is her birthday. She is twenty.” Chapter XX Joan telephoned Hugh the next morning early and asked him to pick her up at Holly if he was driving to town that day. This was not an unusual request, but for all its usualness Hugh never failed to be delightedly surprised to the point of suddenly being able to eat no more breakfast. To-day, however, its effect on him was unusual. He was delighted, it is true, and decided instantly that he _was_ driving, of course, although he had intended going in by train and leaving the car for his mother. The sudden change in plan necessitated hiring a car and driver from a Tarrytown garage by telephone, writing a note of explanation to his mother, who was still asleep, and arriving an hour or so late at his office. This meant nothing to him, or ordinarily would have meant nothing, compared with the felicity of having Joan’s company on the long drive. But to-day, on returning from the telephone, he finished his whole breakfast and told himself that if he drove fast perhaps he needn’t be much more than an hour late in town. He’d try, anyway. It had been a long winter. But to-day not so much as a wispy trace of it was left in the Wild Acres woods. As he drove down the avenue he marveled how the last patches of snow had melted from the hollows over night. The woods glistened with red and purple and gold leaf-buds. To-morrow, or the next day—or the day after that, at the latest,—it would be a golden-green blaze through here. Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold— That was the beginning of a poem of Robert Frost’s. Anne had quoted or read it to Hugh sometime in the winter. He remembered her coming to him where he sat at the piano, tentatively searching for some theme he had heard,—keeping it soft and just for his own ear. He had not wanted to share his music. But Anne had wanted to share her poem. And how had he responded? He had listened, his hands raised waiting above the keys, to that much: Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold—