She had refused him--Harbinger! He had not known, had not suspected how much he wanted her.

How could there be anybody else for him, while that young, calm, sweet-scented, smiling thing lived, to make his head go round, his senses ache, and to fill his heart with longing! He seemed to himself at that moment the most unhappy of all men.
"I shall not give you up," he muttered.
Barbara's answer was a smile, faintly curious, compassionate, yet almost grateful, as if she had said: "Thank you--who knows ?" And rather quickly, a yard or so apart, and talking of horses, they returned to the house.
It was about noon, when, accompanied by Courtier, she rode forth.
The Sou-Westerly spell--a matter of three days--had given way before radiant stillness; and merely to be alive was to feel emotion.

At a little stream running beside the moor under the wild stone man, the riders stopped their horses, just to listen, and, inhale the day.

The far sweet chorus of life was tuned to a most delicate rhythm; not one of those small mingled pipings of streams and the lazy air, of beasts, men; birds, and bees, jarred out too harshly through the garment of sound enwrapping the earth.

It was noon--the still moment--but this hymn to the sun, after his too long absence, never for a moment ceased to be murmured.