“How precise you are!” she said.

“Aren’t they right?” He looked up for her approval, and she saw that he had grown singularly boyish.  His face was less rugged, more sensitive.  He wore no hat, and his thick red hair had fallen across his forehead.  She felt the peculiar power of his look as she had felt it before.

“No, they’re wrong.  They aren’t Chinese puzzles.  Don’t fix them so tight.  Here.”

She took them from him, and as his hands touched hers she noticed that they were cold.  “You’re shaking them all apart,” he protested, “and I took such a lot of trouble.”

As she bent her head his eyes followed the dark coil of hair to the white nape of her neck where her collar rose.  Several loose strands had blown across her ear and wound softly about the delicate lobe.  He wanted to raise his hand and put them in place, but he checked himself with a start.  With his eyes upon her he recalled the warmth of her woollen dress, and he wished that he had put his lips to it as he knelt.  She would never have known.

Then, by a curious emotional phenomenon, she seemed to be suddenly invested with the glory of the sunset.  The goldenrod burned at her feet and on her bosom, and her fervent blood leaped to her face.  The next moment he staggered like a man blinded by too much light—­the field, with Eugenia rising in its midst, flamed before his eyes, and he put out his hand like one in pain.

“What is it?” she asked quickly, and her voice seemed a part of the general radiance.  “You have been looking at the sun.  It hurts my eyes.”

“No,” he answered steadily, “I was looking at you.”

She thrilled as he spoke and brought her eyes to the level of his.  Then she would have looked away, but his gaze held her, and she made a sudden movement of alarm—­a swift tremor to escape.  She held the sheaf of goldenrod to her bosom and above it her eyes shone; her breath came quickly between her parted lips.  All her changeful beauty was startled into life.

“Genia!” he said softly, so softly that he seemed speaking to himself.  “Genia!”

“Yes?” She responded in the same still whisper.

“You know?”

“Yes, I know,” she repeated slowly.  Her glance fell from his and she turned away.

“You know it is—­impossible,” he said.

“Yes, I know it is impossible.”

There was a gasp in her voice.  She turned to move onward—­a briar caught her dress; she stumbled for an instant, and he flung out his arms.

“You know it is impossible,” he said, and kissed her.

The sheaf of goldenrod loosened and scattered between them.  Her head lay on his arm, and he felt her warm breath come and go.  Her face was upturned, and he saw her eyes as he had never seen them before—­light on light, shadow on shadow.  He looked at her in the brief instant as a man looks to remember—­at the white brow—­the red mouth, at the blue veins, and the dark hair, at the upward lift of the chin and the straight throat—­at all the perfect colouring and the imperfect outline.