myself, why trouble, my friend?'

'Because--because I suppose _I_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, it
does. You see, I'--he smiled brilliantly--'am April.'

She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,
metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:

'But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--and
go through a kind of _danse macabre_--'

'But you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly.

'Really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'I am too tired to bud.'

'No,' he pleaded, 'no!' With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was
stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She
looked in the fire, forgetting him.

'You want March,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip off
your old leaves. I s'll have to be March,' he laughed.

She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then
broke out once more.

'You must start again--you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a
blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you're not.
Even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are
not dead....'