From the scrub ahead came his quiet song, infinitely sweet, infinitely plaintive like the faint, soft echo of a fairy's dream. A long note and a shower of silver-sweet echoes, so it ran, the invisible singer seeming to sing for himself alone. So might elfin bells have pealed from a thicket, inexpressibly low and tender.
Diane sat motionless, the free, wild grace of her seeming a part of the primeval quiet. For somehow, by some twist of singer's magic, this Florida bird was singing of Connecticut wind and river, of dogwood on a ridge, of water lilies in the purple of a summer twilight, of a spot named forever in her mind--Arcadia.
Now as the girl listened, a beautiful brown sprite of the rustling pine wood about her, a great flood of color crept suddenly from the brown full throat to the line of her hair, and the scarlet that lingered in her cheeks was wilder than the red of winter holly.
Surely--surely there was no reason under Heaven why the little bird should sing about a hay-camp!
But sing of it he did with a swelling throat and a melodic quiver of nerve and sinew, and a curious dialogue followed.
"A hay-camp is a very foolish thing, to be sure!" sang the bird with a dulcet shower of plaintive notes.
"To be sure," said the voice of the girl's conscience, "to be sure it is. But how very like him!"
"But--but there was the bullet--"
"I have often thought of it," owned the Voice.
"A gallant gentleman must see that his lady comes to no harm. 'Tis the way of gallant gentlemen--"
"Hum!"
"And he never once spoke of his discomfort on the long hot road, though a hay-camp is subject to most singular mishaps."
"I--I have often marveled."
"He is brave and sturdy and of charming humor--"
"A superlative grain of humor perhaps, and he's very lazy--"
"And fine and frank and honorable. One may not forget Arcadia and the rake of twigs."
"One may not forget, that is very true. But he seeks to make himself out such a very great fool---"
"He cloaks each generous instinct with a laughing drollery. Why did you hum when you cooked his supper and called to him through the trees?"
"I--I do not know."
"'Twas the world-old instinct of primitive woman!"
"No! No! No! It was only because I was living the life I love the best. I was very happy."
"Why were you happier after the storm?"
"I--I do not know."
"You have scolded with flashing eyes about the hay-camp--"
"But--I--I did not mind. I tried to mind and could not--"