one or two others lay ready and prop them up against each other, with a careful eye to the wind, lest, if the sheaves were not built solidly enough or fairly balanced, they might be found spilt along the ground in the morning.  And all through the work, the sweeping up of the bundles, the twisting of the ropes, the carrying and the stacking, the rustling noise filled the air, while the faint but pervading smell, that subtle, inexpressibly wholesome smell of ripe grain, made it sweet.

“I love you!” said Ishmael over the dancing oats as Blanche’s eyes met his.

“And I you!...” she replied, slipping her fingers through the yielding straws for his to find and press, while he drew her as near him as she could come for the sheaf between.

She had, indeed, never been so sure she loved him, not even the night before when passion had called to her.  He looked so splendid with his brown throat laid bare by his open shirt; his dark hair, wet with sweat, pushed off his brow; his dark eyes at once younger and more the eyes of a man than they had ever showed.  Blanche felt an odd and delicious thrill as she met his dominant glance; she exulted in the swing of his lithe body, in the ease with which he tossed the heavy sheaves, even in the sweat that stood out over his face and chest, and which made him the more male, the more primitive.  She herself had never seemed so fascinating and so sure; Vassie was swept away by her for the first time; Phoebe lost a certain sense of grudge in awed admiration; Judy, in speech and action, contrived to lead up to her friend, whole-heartedly exploiting the wonder of her.  John-James and Killigrew were probably the only two there who did not acknowledge the sway.

Killigrew declined to labour with the rest; he set up his easel and did several little sketches, nearly all of Judy, whose dark head showed against the grey-gold background of the field with a greater distinction than the pale chignons of Blanche and Vassie or the indeterminate locks of Phoebe.

“You don’t repent?” asked Ishmael, sure of his answer, as he and Blanche each poised a sheaf against the other’s.

“No, no, and no,” she told him, bending round the stack to see his face, her hands still holding it at either side as children stand and dodge when they are playing hide-and-seek.  He shot out a hand to her, but she evaded it and was off to where more bundles lay upon the stubble, and not for some time did he get another chance to speak to her.  Without a word said they tacitly agreed to play this game of only meeting, hands and eyes, now and again as though by chance, she sheltering behind the oats, feeling his passion of worship, even so, as much as she could face under watching eyes.  Like children they played at this game which had grown up without a word, both recognising it, and both the happier for the frail barriers and the secret exchanged by stealth before the others.  At lunch, eaten on the grassy slope of the next field, he did not even sit next her, but both had to watch over themselves that they did not yield too often to the temptation of a glance that would have told as much to an onlooker as to each other.