She was very still, and she looked as if she saw more than mere leaves and branches.
After a few minutes she got up slowly and went to a tall bush of lilac.
She plucked several leaves and carried them back to her bench, somewhat as if she were a girl moving in a dream.

Then, with a tiny shadow of a smile, she took a long pin from under the lapel of her coat and, leaning forward, began to prick out a pattern on the leaf she had laid on the wooden seat.

She was in the midst of doing it--had indeed decorated two or three--when she found herself turning her head to listen to something.

It was a quick, buoyant marching step--not a nursemaid's, not a gardener's, and it was coming towards her corner as if with intention--and she suddenly knew that she was listening as if the intention concerned herself.

This was only because there are psychological moments, moods, conditions at once physical and mental when every incident in life assumes the significance of intention--because unconsciously or consciously one is _waiting_.
Here was a crisp tread somehow conveying a suggestion of familiar happy eagerness.