I

There was a foam of anemones in the hollows of Furnace Wood. The wind crept over the heads of the hazel bushes, bowing them gently, and shaking out of them the scent of their budding. From the young grass and tender, vivid mosses crept up more scents, faint, moist and earthy. The sky was grey behind the stooping hazels, but glimmered with the yellow promise of noon.

Janet Furlonger and Quentin Lowe had met to say good-bye in Furnace Wood. The scent of spring was in Janey's clothes, and when her lover drew her head down to his shoulder he tasted spring in her hair. But there was not spring on her lips when he sought them—only the salt wash of sorrow.

"Why do you cry, little Janey? This is the beginning of hope."

Another tear slid down towards her mouth, but she wiped it away—he must not drink her tears.

"Quentin ... I hope it won't be for long."

"No, no—not long, little Janey, sweet, not long. It can't be. In six months, perhaps in less, you'll have a letter asking you to come up to town and marry a poor but independent journalist."

"You really think that this time you're going to succeed?"

"Of course. Do you imagine I'd touch Rider's idiotic rag with the tongs if I didn't look on it as a stepping-stone to better things. There's a mixed metaphor, Janey. Didn't you notice it?"

"No, dear."

"You're not critical enough, little one. You're worthy of good prose—when I'm too weak and heavy-hearted for poetry."

The wind sighed towards them, bringing the scent of hidden water.

"I must leave you, my own—or I shall be late. Now for months of hard work and hungry dreams of Janey, who will be given at last to my great hunger. Little heart, do you know what it is to hunger?"

She trembled. "Yes."

"Then pity me. Pity me from the fields when you walk in them, as you and I have so often walked, over fallen leaves—pity me from your fire when you sit by it and see in the embers things too beautiful to be—from your meals when you eat them—you and I have had only one meal together, Janey—and from your bed when you lie waking in it. Janey, Janey—pity me."

"Pity ... yes...."

He was holding her in his arms, looking into her beautiful, haggard face. A sudden pang contracted her limbs, then released them into an abandonment of weakness.

"Quentin ... promise me that you will never forget how much you loved me."

"Janey!"

"Promise me."

"Janey, how dare you!—'loved you'! What do you mean?"

"Oh, please promise!"

She was crying. He had never seen her like this. Hitherto at their meetings she had left the stress and earthquake of love to him, fronting it with a sweet, half-timid calm. Now she clung to him, twisted and trembled.

"Promise, Quentin."

"Well, since you're such a silly little thing, I will. Listen. 'I promise never to forget how much I loved you.' There, you darling fool."

"Thank you ..." she said weakly.

He drew her close, kissed her, and laughed at her.

"Janey—you're the spring, with its doubts and distresses. You were the autumn when autumn was here, all tanned and flushed and rumpled, with September in your eyes. Now you're the spring, thin, soft, aloof and wondering—you're sunshine behind a cloud—you're the promise of August and heavy apple-boughs."

"And you'll never forget how much you loved me...."