Presently Joan said, “You can put me down at the next corner, Hugh. I want to walk twenty blocks or so for exercise before plunging into my silly spring shopping.” She did not stir her hand from his until the car was parked against the curb. But spring was insistent. Nothing could keep the pointed, delicate buds from piercing their way through the harsh bark to azure light and air and sun, and their flowering expression. One afternoon, a few days after his drive to town with Joan, Hugh returned to Wild Acres rather early with the idea of persuading Ariel and his grandmother to take a drive with him, it was such perfect weather. No one answered his knock at the attic apartment door; so he opened it and went in. Grandam was not there on the bed nor in the long chair: only Ariel, and she was kneeling by one of the wide-open windows, her back to the room, looking out into the tree-tops that in the past few days had foamed into a sea of green gold. The sunlight slanted down this sea, at the moment of Hugh’s arrival and Ariel’s watching, in a way that turned it into an unearthly lightness of gold,—a winged, breathing _wind_ of green gold. And Ariel knelt upright at the edge of the wind-shaken loveliness like a wand, stilled, not bent, by the high stir of beauty. Hugh stopped short. He had come to Grandam’s low table and saw it spread with brown paper, and on the paper a heap of wild flowers. Hepaticas, anemones, white and yellow violets, green leaves too, and clumps of rich brown wood loam,—all in a fragrant tangle. At the edge of the pile Ariel’s green hat was tossed down, with its green feather. “Hello! Did you collect all these?” Hugh asked. At his voice Ariel turned and stood, her body aurora’d by the golden stream of air and leaves behind her. “You here? Hello, Hugh! Grandam’s driving with your mother. It’s such a day! I’ve been in the woods all the afternoon, with Persis and Nicky. Just got in.” She moved toward him and stood by the table looking down at the flowers. Some of the gold from beyond the window had flowed into her hair. And when she looked up from the flowers Hugh saw it in her eyes too,—green gold. The woods, Wild Acres woods, beloved of Hugh, were there, shimmering, in Ariel’s eyes. She looked her surprise at the expression on Hugh’s face before her. It was so stirred, so new. Perhaps it was to break the spell and get the familiar Hugh back again that she lifted her hands, palm upwards,—the corners of her mouth too, in that sharp delicate lift darted with light, that was her smile when she danced in the woods for Persis and Nicky—and remarked, “Spring has come.”