Howard applauded solemnly.

“I’ll make a poem of that—­one day, when I’m awfully drunk, and don’t know what I’m doing.”

But Robert sat up sharply, frowning at her, white, almost accusing.

“When did you live in Italy, Francey?”

“Last year—­all last year.”

“You mean—­you chucked your work—­everything—­just to play round——?”

Howard yawned prodigiously.

“You don’t get our Francey’s point of view, Stonehouse.  You don’t understand.”

“Just to play round,” she echoed to herself.  Then she laughed and unclasped her hands from about her knees and stood up effortlessly, stretching out her arms like a sleepy child.  “And now I’m going to gather sticks for a fire and primroses to take home.  Coming Robert?”

“No,” he muttered.

Howard rolled over in the grass.

“Sulky young idiot—­if I wasn’t half asleep—­or I’d been asked——­”

His voice died into an unintelligible murmur.

So she went alone.  The rest, heavy with food and sunshine, nibbled jadedly at the remnants of the feast, exchanging broken, drowsy comments.  Perhaps Gertie Sumners was brooding over the three kings with their golden crowns.  But Robert knelt and watched Francey run down the hill-side, faster and faster, like a brown shadow.  There was a thick belt of beech trees at the bottom, and she ran into them and was lost.

He rose stiffly.  He did not want the others to see—­he did not want to know himself, that he was following her.  He strolled indolently about the crest of the hill, whistling to the breeze, his eyes hunting the wood beneath like the eyes of a young setter at heel.  But when at last he was out of sight he slipped his leash and was off, running recklessly, headlong.  The hill rose up behind him and sent him down its hillocky slopes as though before the horns of an avalanche.  The wind blew the scent of trees and flowers and young grass against his burning face.  It was like draughts of a cold, clear wine.  It was like running full-tilt down Acacia Grove leaping and whooping.

It was frightening, too—­a hand fumbling at the heart—­this fierce coming to life of something dormant, this breaking free——­

The wood had swallowed her.  He drew up panting in the cool twilight.  Beyond the faint breathing of the leaves overhead and the secret movement of hidden things, there was no sound.  He walked on quickly.  At first it was only suspense, childish, thrilling.  Then it was more than that.  His heart began to beat quickly.  He tried to call her, but the quiet daunted him.  The wood was a still, green pool into which she had dropped and vanished.  It was an enchanted wood.  There was enchantment all about her.  They had seemed so near to one another—­and then in a moment she had slipped away from him into a life of her own where he could not follow.