The white road turned from the church, flowed by a regiment of peaked
cottages, and found the open again. Meadow and grain field sank in a
silent wave to a broad valley and rose to slumbering hilltops where
dark trees stood sentry. On the other side their road touched an
embankment of yellow clay, crowned by a wire fence. Above the fence
rose a steep, wooded slope.
"... In the church! I think maybe it was a sin!" Marie held to his arm
with both hands and leaned against him as she had not before.
"That? No, it was not a sin!"
Before they saw it they heard the metallic voice of a giant windmill.
It stood on its slender legs as if it might stalk across the hills home
once the day's whirling were done; and around on the slope of another
hill stood its brother, fencing the spears of the sun with its turning
silver arms.
"There is a path in the wood."
"And up there a gate," Spike pointed. The embankment was not steep
here. "We'll walk around to the top of the hill if you want and sit
down and rest."
The path in the wood was bordered with low purple flowers, thick as
moss. In the swarthy company of dwarf pines, underbrush and little
twisted oaks stood a group of slender birch trees leaning away from
their center--girls dancing in a ring, hands clasped. Deeper in the
wood the path became a dark tunnel but in a grassy place, near a tree
that mixed low branches with its muscular roots, they found sunlight
and silence waiting them.
Marie slipped off her jacket and smoothed the collar of her waist. She
fanned hot cheeks with her hat, patted her thick black hair with palms
and outspread fingers.
She sat facing the path, feet in front of her, hands in her lap. Spike
hugged his knees and looked down through trees to the open valley.
White clouds sailed in a sky of deepening blue, and their shadows moved
across the green-and-yellow squares of the fields.
"Suppose we hadn't come," Marie said. "Is it as nice as the place you
planned to go?"
"Nicer, because it happened by itself."
"Listen! A woman's voice! Coming this way! Sh-h-h!"
"I wonder...?" Spike's fear awoke in him. But it was only an old
peasant woman talking to her red cow as she led it around the curve
below them, and passed.
"I don't suppose we need to whisper."
"Of course not!" said Spike aloud. But the quiet wood was affronted.
"We must talk _low_."
Marie nodded. The silent trees and the clouds and the ferns and they
themselves were in a pause of waiting.
"Marie ... I love you."
"My dear ... I love you so much!!"
"We'll be happy together."
"Oh, yes." Marie looked up seriously. Her eyes closed as his arms went
round her.
Now one might hear the distant chatter of the windmill. A bird with a
sound of flutter darted low across the clearing....
The sun was gone from their place but on the hills beyond the valley
it shone with a light of fire. Before they reached the highroad Spike
brushed burrs and pine needles from Marie's skirt. They walked hand in
hand toward the village. Marie swung her hat.
"We'll remember the purple flowers, and the old tree; and when we
return we'll always know where the path is by the windmills." Marie
looked back to the wood. "The quiet and the sunlight would have stood
under the trees by themselves if we hadn't come."