V


There had never been such a June in Eagle County. Usually it was a month
of moods, with abrupt alternations of belated frost and mid-summer heat;
this year, day followed day in a sequence of temperate beauty. Every
morning a breeze blew steadily from the hills. Toward noon it built up
great canopies of white cloud that threw a cool shadow over fields and
woods; then before sunset the clouds dissolved again, and the western
light rained its unobstructed brightness on the valley.

On such an afternoon Charity Royall lay on a ridge above a sunlit
hollow, her face pressed to the earth and the warm currents of the grass
running through her. Directly in her line of vision a blackberry branch
laid its frail white flowers and blue-green leaves against the sky. Just
beyond, a tuft of sweet-fern uncurled between the beaded shoots of the
grass, and a small yellow butterfly vibrated over them like a fleck of
sunshine. This was all she saw; but she felt, above her and about her,
the strong growth of the beeches clothing the ridge, the rounding of
pale green cones on countless spruce-branches, the push of myriads of
sweet-fern fronds in the cracks of the stony slope below the wood,
and the crowding shoots of meadowsweet and yellow flags in the pasture
beyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of
calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf
and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading
sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice
of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist
earth-smell that was like the breath of some huge sun-warmed animal.

Charity had lain there a long time, passive and sun-warmed as the slope