A woman was stooping at the woodpile, filling her arms with crooked sticks of rough-barked sage.

From the color of her hair Bud knew that she was not Honey, and that she was therefore a stranger to him.

But he swung off the path and went over to her as naturally as he would go to pick up a baby that had fallen.
"I'll carry that in for you," he said, and put out his hand to help her to her feet.
Before he touched her she was on her feet and looking at him.

Bud could not remember afterwards that she had done anything else; he seemed to have seen only her eyes, and into them and beyond them to a soul that somehow made his heart tremble.
What she said, what he answered, was of no moment.

He could not have told afterwards what it was.