But it was fresh. Spring danced there gleefully. Summer would gather the harvest; spring was the sower of love thoughts. Estelle strolled across the grass, sat down at length on a wooden bench, where a great beech above her made green fretwork against a sea of tender blue. They were silent. Everyday words were out of tune to spring's music; and they feared to say the others. "You cannot go, Estelle. You will not really." Bertie harked back to the fear of parting. "And if I stayed," she said, suddenly mutinous, alluring. "If you stayed," he whispered, then grew grave. "Could two people not make a world for themselves, Estelle, and be happy in it alone?" She held sweet fruit to her aching mind, then broke through to the hard kernel of the truth. "No, for we are never alone," she said gently. "That is the weariness of it. There are no two who strive to make this world who do not draw others inside the hedge of their secret orchard." His hand fell on hers softly. "Then, since there is no future, I'll have to-day," he said sharply. "We'll dine and do a theatre, Estelle, and sup recklessly in some quiet place." What theatre? Bertie had a paper in his pocket; they bent over it. "This new thing--Spring," he said. "It's advanced, isn't it?" she asked. "It's very much so, they say. Miss Prude! But I am not in the mood for flounced virtue set in Scotch, nor for all the solid worth which the fashion follows. The music's lovely. I hear the piece floats through a pale green wood, and over primroses and daffodils, away to a sapphire sea." "Let it be Spring then," she said. "This day is yours, my friend." Friend! whose hand lay hot on hers, when their eyes met half joyously, half despairingly. Joy that fate should have allowed them to meet; despair that since man and woman are created for each other they could not know the fullness of happiness. A cord long strained will snap at last. The cord of self-restraint which they had tied up the hands of nature with had come to its last strand, and they knew it. The spring day slipped away to the hour when the curtain rose on the new musical play. Well-named, for it was light and sweet as spring himself, full of tenderly passionate music, of waking love, of budding youth. Tame blood which would not run a little faster as the south and west winds, the sunshine and the showers, came creeping to wake the spring earth maidens. Girls veiled in tender green, their limbs and faces seen through a mist of some transparency. The wild winds blew the draperies aside; a mock gale blowing from the wings; sunshine turned the green to a glow of gold; the showers came, mistily green, with light behind them, but to each the maidens turned, trembled, and gave themselves to the wooing arms. The whole piece was full of suggestion and of fantasy.