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 this 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.