The wood lay lapped in the shadow that the western ridge had cast on it
an hour earlier than the rest of the world's bedtime, ever since the
trees had been there to receive the chill caress, and that was for many
a hundred years. Old Madgy swore that even in her young day the small
folk had still held their revels on the mossy slopes amongst the fanlike
roots, and who knows what larger folk had not fled there to wanton more
sweetly than in close cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more
easily with their thoughts? The wood alone knew, and it held its
memories as closely as it held the thousand tiny lives confided to its
care; the bright-eyed shrew-mice that poked quivering noses through the
litter of last year's leaves, the birds that nested behind the
clustering twigs, the slow-worms that slipped along its grassy ditches.

Loveday turned off from the road and approached the wood from the west,
pausing when she reached the smooth grey boulders that were piled along
the ridge. She stood there gazing out over the smiling champaign, pale
and verdant from the farthest rim to the treetops that made as it were a
sea of faint green at her feet, for already in that soft clime the twigs
were misty with young leaf, and on the willows the velvety pearl-hued
ovals had begun to deck themselves with a delicate powdering of gold,
while from the hazels beside her the yellow lambs' tails hung still as
tiny pennants in the evening air. The gold of nature was as yet more
vivid than her green, which still showed tentative, enquiring of April
what of betrayal might not lie in the careless plaits of her garment.
To Loveday, high on her rock, between the gold of the sky and the gold
of the blossom, it seemed that April must of a certainty stay as fair
as this and lead to as bright a May, when that vision of her new self
should become a yet brighter reality. She was confident of April because
she was confident of life, lapped in an aureate glow that seemed to
suffuse the very air she drew into her lungs so that it intoxicated her