Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/127

 Derek followed her and looked down. "You know," he said, "I'm perfectly aware of what you're up to. And it's no use. You never bring anything out. I don't believe there's anything to bring. That empty nest was an omen for you. Better give up trying and just be ornamental." She looked out at him, her head delicately poised, with the cold, aloof regard of a snake.

A meadow lark rose from its nest in the meadow beyond. Turning his eyes to watch its flight Derek saw Grace Jerrold kneeling bareheaded by the rill. Her face was half-hidden, but her posture suggested sadness. She sad, too, on this mirthful day of spring! As he looked, she raised her hand from the moist grass and held it to her eyes. She was quietly crying. Again she laid her hand on the grass—a gentle white hand, he thought, like a flower. He wanted very much to comfort her. But how to speak—how to pass comfort through this damnable barbed wire fence! His eyes fell on the bird's nest. He snatched it up. It should bear the cargo of his comfort past that barbed barrier. He took a small note book from his pocket, tore out a leaf, and wrote, very carefully, so that one might read it easily through tears—"Please don't cry." He folded it, laid it in the nest, now a useless derelict no longer, and set it carefully in the middle of the rill just under the fence. He loosed it. For a space it floated languidly against a spray of watercress, then a masterful current took it in hand, and hurried it quickly on its mission. The rill broadened where Grace knelt and Derek feared for a moment that his note would be rushed past her unseen, but the instant the nest appeared before her, the white hand that had been raised to wipe another tear, darted out and swept it ashore. She opened the note. She read. She sprang to her feet and faced him. He could see then that her white cheeks were dabbled with tears.