Selwyn flattened out the letter and deliberately tore out the last paragraph.  Then he set it afire with a match.

“At least,” he said with an ugly look, “I can keep her out of this”; and he dropped the brittle blackened paper and set his heel on it.  Then he resumed his perusal of the mutilated letter, reread it, and finally destroyed it.

“Alixe,” he wrote in reply, “we had better stop this letter-writing before somebody stops us.  Anybody desiring to make mischief might very easily misinterpret what we are doing.  I, of course, could not close the correspondence, so I ask you to do so without any fear that you will fail to understand why I ask it.  Will you?”

To which she replied: 

     “Yes, Phil.  Good-bye.

     “ALIXE.”

A box of roses left her his debtor; she was too intelligent to acknowledge them.  Besides, matters were going better with her.

And that was all for a while.

Meanwhile Lent had gone, and with it the last soiled snow of winter.  It was an unusually early spring; tulips in Union Square appeared coincident with crocus and snow-drop; high above the city’s haze wavering wedges of wild-fowl drifted toward the Canadas; a golden perfumed bloom clotted the naked branches of the park shrubs; Japanese quince burst into crimson splendour; tender chestnut leaves unfolded; the willows along the Fifty-ninth Street wall waved banners of gilded green; and through the sunshine battered butterflies floated, and the wild bees reappeared, scrambling frantically, powdered to the thighs in the pollen of a million dandelions.

     “Spring, with that nameless fragrance in the air
     Which breathes of all things fair,”

sang a young girl riding in the Park.  And she smiled to herself as she guided her mare through the flowering labyrinths.  Other notes of the Southern poet’s haunting song stole soundless from her lips; for it was only her heart that was singing there in the sun, while her silent, smiling mouth mocked the rushing melody of the birds.

Behind her, powerfully mounted, ambled the belted groom; she was riding alone in the golden weather because her good friend Selwyn was very busy in his office downtown, and Gerald, who now rode with her occasionally, was downtown also, and there remained nobody else to ride with.  Also the horses were to be sent to Silverside soon, and she wanted to use them as much as possible while the Park was at its loveliest.

She, therefore, galloped conscientiously every morning, sometimes with Nina, but usually alone.  And every afternoon she and Nina drove there, drinking the freshness of the young year—­the most beautiful year of her life, she told herself, in all the exquisite maturity of her adolescence.

So she rode on, straight before her, head high, the sun striking face and firm, white throat; and in her heart laughed spring eternal, whose voiceless melody parted her lips.