“Megan!”

But she went on; and taking hold of her arm, he turned her gently round to him.

“Stop and speak to me.”

“Why do you beg my pardon?  It is not to me you should do that.”

“Well, then, to Joe.”

“How dare he come after me?”

“In love with you, I suppose.”

She stamped her foot.

Ashurst uttered a short laugh.  “Would you like me to punch his head?”

She cried with sudden passion: 

“You laugh at me-you laugh at us!”

He caught hold of her hands, but she shrank back, till her passionate little face and loose dark hair were caught among the pink clusters of the apple blossom.  Ashurst raised one of her imprisoned hands and put his lips to it.  He felt how chivalrous he was, and superior to that clod Joe—­just brushing that small, rough hand with his mouth I Her shrinking ceased suddenly; she seemed to tremble towards him.  A sweet warmth overtook Ashurst from top to toe.  This slim maiden, so simple and fine and pretty, was pleased, then, at the touch of his lips!  And, yielding to a swift impulse, he put his arms round her, pressed her to him, and kissed her forehead.  Then he was frightened—­she went so pale, closing her eyes, so that the long, dark lashes lay on her pale cheeks; her hands, too, lay inert at her sides.  The touch of her breast sent a shiver through him.  “Megan!” he sighed out, and let her go.  In the utter silence a blackbird shouted.  Then the girl seized his hand, put it to her cheek, her heart, her lips, kissed it passionately, and fled away among the mossy trunks of the apple trees, till they hid her from him.

Ashurst sat down on a twisted old tree growing almost along the ground, and, all throbbing and bewildered, gazed vacantly at the blossom which had crowned her hair—­those pink buds with one white open apple star.  What had he done?  How had he let himself be thus stampeded by beauty—­pity—­or—­just the spring!  He felt curiously happy, all the same; happy and triumphant, with shivers running through his limbs, and a vague alarm.  This was the beginning of—­what?  The midges bit him, the dancing gnats tried to fly into his mouth, and all the spring around him seemed to grow more lovely and alive; the songs of the cuckoos and the blackbirds, the laughter of the yaflies, the level-slanting sunlight, the apple blossom which had crowned her head!  He got up from the old trunk and strode out of the orchard, wanting space, an open sky, to get on terms with these new sensations.  He made for the moor, and from an ash tree in the hedge a magpie flew out to herald him.