up the measure again, and the wind shook the trees far above them,
to tell that it was still awake, and the girl was the very spirit of
the springtime once more.

"Oh, Arthur," she said as she led him down the path, "just think how
happy I ought to be, to welcome all the old things after so long,
and to find them all so beautiful; it is just as if the country had
put on its finest dress to give me greeting, and I feel as if I were
not half gay enough in return. Just think what this springtime is,
how all over the country everything is growing and rejoicing; _that_
is what I want you to put into the poem for me."

And so she led him on into the forest, carried on by joy herself,
and taking all things into her song. She did not notice that the
young man's forehead was flushed, or that his hand was burning when
she took it in hers as they walked; if she noticed it, she chose at
any rate to pretend not to. She sang to him about the forest and the
flowers, and some more of the merry song which she had sung before;
then she stopped to shake her head at a saucy adder's tongue that
thrust its yellow face up through the dead leaves at her feet, and
to ask that wisest-looking of all flowers what secrets it knew about
the spring-time. Later on they came to a place where the brook fled
faster, sparkling brightly in the sunlight over its shallow bed of
pebbles; it was only her runaway caroling that could keep pace with
that, and so her glee mounted higher, the young man at her side half
in a trance, watching her laughing face and drinking in the sound of
her voice.

How long that might have lasted there is no telling, had it not been
that the woods came to an end, disclosing more open fields and a