Through the clear windows of the morning, ten
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!"

That last word rose like a flight of wings into the blue air. Her
husband looked at her; for a compelling instant his eyes dredged the
depths of hers, so that all the joyous, frightened woman in her
retreated behind a flutter of laughter.

"'O Spring!'" he repeated; "_we_ are Spring, Nelly--you and I.... I'll
never forget the first time I heard you sing that; snowing like blazes
it was,--do you remember? But I swear I felt this hot grass then in
Mrs. Newbolt's parlor, with all those awful bric-à-brac things around!
Yes," he said, putting his hand on a little sun-drenched bowlder jutting
from the earth beside him; "I felt this sun on my hand! And when you
came to 'O Spring!' I saw this sky--" He stopped, pulled three blades of
grass and began to braid them into a ring. "Lord!" he said, and his
voice was suddenly startled; "what a darned little thing can throw the
switches for a man! Because I didn't get by in Math. D and Ec 2, and had
to crawl out to Mercer to cram with old Bradley--I met you! Eleanor!
Isn't it wonderful? A little thing like that--just falling down in
mathematics--changed my whole life?" The wild gayety in his eyes
sobered. "I happened to come to Mercer--and, you are my wife." His
fingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instant
he threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in a
preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the
braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger
for fifty-four minutes, kissed it--and the palm of her hand--and said,
"You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me.
I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on; give us