So the October days burned like a procession of golden flames passing
in magic sequence amid yellowing woods and over the brown and spongy
gold of salt meadows which had been sheared for stable bedding. And
everywhere over their land lay the dun-coloured velvet squares of
freshly ploughed fields awaiting unfragrant fertilizer and the autumn
rains.
The rains came heavily toward the end of October; and November was
grey and wet and rather warm. But open fires became necessary in the
house, and now they regularly reddened the twilight in library and
living-room when the early November dusk brought Athalie and Clive
indoors.
Hither they came, the fire-lit hearth their trysting place after they
had exchanged their rain-drenched clothes for something dry; and there
they curled up on the wide sofas and watched the swift darkness fall,
and the walls and ceiling redden.
It was an hour which Athalie had once read of as the "Children's Hour"
and now she understood better its charming significance. And she kept
it religiously, permitting herself to do nothing, and making Clive
defer anything he had to do, until after dinner. Then he might read
his paper or book, and she could take up her sewing if she chose, or
study, or play, or write the few letters that she cared to write.
Clive wrote no more, now. In this first year together they desired
each other only, indifferent to all else outside.
It was to her the magic year of fulfilment; to him an enchanted
interlude wherein only the girl beside him mattered.
Athalie sewed a great deal on odd, delicate, sheer materials where
narrowness and length ruled proportions, and where there seemed to be
required much lace and many little ribbons. Also she hummed to
herself as she sewed, singing under her breath endless airs which had
slipped into her head she scarce knew when or how.
An odd and fragrant freshness seemed to cling to her making her almost
absurdly youthful, as though she had suddenly dropped back to her
girlhood. Clive noticed it.
"You look about sixteen," he said.
"My heart is younger, dear."
"How young?"
"You know when it was born, don't you? Very well, it is as many days
old as I have been in love with you. Before that it was a muscle
capable merely of sturdy friendship."
One day a packet came from New York for her. It contained two rings,
one magnificent, the other a plain circlet. She kissed him rather
shyly, wore both that evening, but not again.
"I am not ashamed," she explained serenely. "Folkways are now a matter
of indifference to me. Civilisation must offer me a better argument
than it has offered hitherto before I resign to it my right in you, or
deny your right to me."