Spring was also in Amy's eyes, in the oval delicacy of her girlish face
with its exquisite flush, in her quick, deft hands and elastic step as she
arranged baskets and vases of flowers. Webb watched her with his deep eyes,
and his Easter worship began early in the day. True homage it was, because
so involuntary, so unquestioning and devoid of analysis, so utterly free
from the self-conscious spirit that expects a large and definite return for
adoration. His sense of beauty, the poetic capabilities of his nature, were
kindled. Like the flowers that seemed to know their place in a harmony of
color when she touched them, Amy herself was emblematic of Easter, of its
brightness and hopefulness, of the new, richer spiritual life that was
coming to him. He loved his homely work and calling as never before,
because he saw how on every side it touched and blended with the beautiful
and sacred. Its highest outcome was like the blossoms before him which had
developed from a rank soil, dark roots, and prosaic woody stems. The grain
he raised fed and matured the delicate human perfection shown in every
graceful and unconscious pose of the young girl. She was Nature's priestess
interpreting to him a higher, gentler world which before he had seen but
dimly--interpreting it all the more clearly because she made no effort to
reveal it. She led the way, he followed, and the earth ceased to be an
aggregate of forms and material forces. With his larger capabilities he
might yet become her master, but now, with an utter absence of vanity, he
recognized how much she was doing for him, how she was widening his horizon
and uplifting his thoughts and motives, and he reverenced her as such men
ever do a woman that leads them to a higher plane of life.
No such deep thoughts and vague homage perplexed Burt as he assisted Amy
with attentions that were assiduous and almost garrulous. The brightness
of the morning was in his handsome face, and the gladness of his buoyant
temperament in his heart. Amy was just to his taste--pretty, piquant,
rose-hued, and a trifle thorny too, at times, he thought. He believed
that he loved her with a boundless devotion--at least it seemed so that
morning. It was delightful to be near her, to touch her fingers
occasionally as he handed her flowers, and to win smiles, arch looks, and
even words that contained a minute prick like spines on the rose stems. He
felt sure that his suit would prosper in time, and she was all the more
fascinating because showing no sentimental tendencies to respond with a
promptness that in other objects of his attention in the past had even
proved embarrassing. She was a little conscious of Webb's silent
observation, and, looking up suddenly, caught an expression that deepened
her color slightly.
"That for your thoughts," she said, tossing him a flower with sisterly
freedom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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