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SON OF THE WIND

"What an awful lot of noise you make!" she whispered.

"Sound carries in this air."

"I can't help it, I'm not a feather. If you would only keep still a minute—"

She flitted just beyond his reach—seemed to be there already without having run away.

"Look over there," she said, pointing downward through the trees. "That way you will see the moon."

The moon! What was the moon to him, unless the reflection of her? What had the whole earth been to her only yesterday but a place in which to stand and be embraced? Now she could look at a bright spot above a scallop of trees with eyes that had forgotten him. Yet, after they had swept the trees, the ground, the sky, they returned again, as to the center of a circle, to his face.

"Are you coming?"

"You mad woman, where are you taking us?" She answered with a pressure of the hand, and began to take dancing steps, as if what her eyes saw around here was music to her. She moved in front of him with darting motions, now to this side of the road, now to the other. House and clearing disappeared behind them. A fretwork of white and black streamed upon their faces. They passed the gate-posts that rose upon their progress like phantoms.

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