The two looked at each other again, smiling. Up on the pond-side, in the full glitter of light, we looked round where the blades of clustering corn were softly healing the red bosom of the hill. The larks were overhead among the sunbeams. We straggled away across the grass. The field was all afroth with cowslips, a yellow, glittering, shaking froth on the still green of the grass. We trailed our shadows across the fields, extinguishing the sunshine on the flowers as we went. The air was tingling with the scent of blossoms. “Look at the cowslips, all shaking with laughter,” said Emily, and she tossed back her head, and her dark eyes sparkled among the flow of gauze. Lettie was on in front, flitting darkly across the field, bending over the flowers, stooping to the earth like a sable Persephone come into freedom. George had left her at a little distance, hunting for something in the grass. He stopped, and remained standing in one place. Gradually, as if unconsciously, she drew near to him, and when she lifted her head, after stooping to pick some chimney-sweeps, little grass flowers, she laughed with a slight surprise to see him so near. “Ah!” she said. “I thought I was all alone in the world—such a splendid world—it was so nice.” “Like Eve in a meadow in Eden—and Adam’s shadow somewhere on the grass,” said I. “No—no Adam,” she asserted, frowning slightly, and laughing. “Who ever would want streets of gold,” Emily was saying to me, “when you can have a field of cowslips! Look at that hedgebottom that gets the South sun—one stream and glitter of buttercups.” “Those Jews always had an eye to the filthy lucre—they even made Heaven out of it,” laughed Lettie, and, turning to him, she said, “Don’t you wish we were wild—hark, like wood-pigeons—or larks—or, look, like peewits? Shouldn’t you love flying and wheeling and sparkling and—courting in the wind?” She lifted her eyelids, and vibrated the question. He flushed, bending over the ground. “Look,” he said, “here’s a larkie’s.” Once a horse had left a hoofprint in the soft meadow; now the larks had rounded, softened the cup, and had laid there three dark-brown eggs. Lettie sat down and leaned over the nest; he leaned above her. The wind running over the flower heads, peeped in at the little brown buds, and bounded off again gladly. The big clouds sent messages to them down the shadows, and ran in raindrops to touch them. “I wish,” she said, “I wish we were free like that. If we could put everything safely in a little place in the earth—couldn’t we have a good time as well as the larks?” “I don’t see,” said he, “why we can’t.” “Oh—but _I_ can’t—you know we can’t”—and she looked at him fiercely. “Why can’t you?” he asked.