THE OF THE FORBIDDEN APPLE On the first Sunday in June, when Lettie knew she would keep her engagement with Leslie, and when she was having a day at home from Highclose, she got ready to go down to the mill. We were in mourning for an aunt, so she wore a dress of fine black voile, and a black hat with long feathers. Then, when I looked at her fair hands, and her arms closely covered in the long black of her sleeves, I felt keenly my old brother-love shielding, indulgent.
 
It was a windy, sunny day. In shelter the heat was , but in the open the wind its fire. Every now and then a white cloud broad based, blue shadowed, travelled slowly along the sky-road after the small in the distance, and trailing over us a chill shade, a gloom which we watched creep on over the water, over the wood and the hill. These royal, rounded clouds had sailed all day along the same route, from the harbour of the South to the wastes in the Northern sky, following the swift wild geese. The hurried along singing, only here and there lingering to whisper to the secret bushes, then setting off afresh with a new snatch of song.
 
The pecked staidly in the farmyard, with Sabbath decorum. Occasionally a lost, sportive wind-puff would wander across the yard and them, and they resented it. The pigs were asleep in the sun, giving faint now and then from sheer luxury. I saw a squirrel go down the mossy garden wall, up into the laburnum tree, where he lay flat along the , and listened. Suddenly away he went, to himself. Gyp all at once set off barking, but I her down; it was the unusual sight of Lettie's dark dress that startled her, I suppose.
 
We went quietly into the kitchen. Mrs. Saxton was just putting a chicken, wrapped in a piece of , on the warm hob to it into life; it looked very feeble. George was asleep, with his head in his arms on the table; the father was asleep on the sofa, very comfortable and admirable; I heard Emily fleeing up stairs, presumably to dress.
 
"He stays out so late—up at the Inn," whispered the mother in a high whisper, looking at George, "and then he's up at five—he doesn't get his proper rest." She turned to the chicks, and continued in her whisper—"the mother left them just before they hatched out, so we've been bringing them on here. This one's a bit weak—I thought I'd hot him up a bit" she laughed with a little frown of deprecation. Eight or nine yellow, little were cheeping and scuffling in the fender. Lettie over them to touch them; they were tame, and ran among her fingers.
 
Suddenly George's mother gave a loud cry, and rushed to the fire. There was a smell of down. The chicken had into the fire, and its faint among the red-hot cokes. The father jumped from the sofa; George sat up with wide eyes; Lettie gave a little cry and a ; Trip rushed round and began to bark. There was a smell of cooked meat.
 
"There goes number one!" said the mother, with her queer little laugh. It made me laugh too.
 
"What's a matter—what's a matter?" asked the father excitedly.
 
"It's a chicken been and walked into the fire—I put it on the hob to warm," explained his wife.
 
"Goodness—I couldn't think what was up!" he said, and dropped his head to trace gradually the border between sleeping and waking.
 
George sat and smiled at us faintly, he was too dazed to speak. His chest still leaned against the table, and his arms were spread out thereon, but he lifted his face, and looked at Lettie with his dazed, dark eyes, and smiled faintly at her. His hair was all , and his shirt collar unbuttoned. Then he got up slowly, pushing his chair back with a loud noise, and stretched himself, pressing his arms with a long, heavy stretch.
 
"Oh—h—h!" he said, bending his arms and then letting them drop to his sides. "I never thought you'd come to-day."
 
"I wanted to come and see you—I shan't have many more chances," said Lettie, turning from him and yet looking at him again.
 
"No, I suppose not," he said, into quiet. Then there was silence for some time. The mother began to after Leslie, and kept the conversation up till Emily came down, blushing and smiling and glad.
 
"Are you coming out?" said she, "there are two or three ' nests, and a spinkie's——"
 
"I think I'll leave my hat," said Lettie, unpinning it as she , and shaking her hair when she was free. Mrs. Saxton insisted on her taking a long white silk scarf; Emily also wrapped her hair in a gauze scarf, and looked beautiful.
 
George came out with us, coatless, hatless, his waistcoat all unbuttoned, as he was. We crossed the , over the old bridge, and went to where the slopes ran down to the lower pond, a bank all covered with , and scattered with a hazel bush or two. Among the nettles old pans were , and old coarse cropped up.
 
We came upon a kettle heavily coated with lime. Emily bent down and looked, and then we peeped in. There were the birds with their yellow stretched so wide apart I feared they would never close them again. Among the naked little mites, that begged from us so blindly and confidently, were three eggs.
 
"They are like Irish children peeping out of a cottage," said Emily, with the family fondness for romantic .
 
We went on to where a tin lay with the lid pressed back, and inside it, and neat, was another nest, with six eggs, cheek to cheek.
 
"How warm they are," said Lettie, them, "you can fairly feel the mother's breast."
 
He tried to put his hand into the tin, but the space was too small, and they looked into each other's eyes and smiled. "You'd think the father's breast had marked them with red," said Emily.
 
As we went up the orchard side we saw three wide displays of coloured pieces of pots arranged at the foot of three trees.
 
"Look," said Emily, "those are the children's houses. You don't know how our Mollie gets all Sam's pretty bits—she is a cajoling hussy!"
 
The two looked at each other again, smiling. Up on the pond-side, in the full glitter of light, we looked round where the blades of clustering corn were softly healing the red of the hill. The were overhead among the sunbeams. We straggled away across the grass. The field was all afroth with cowslips, a yellow, glittering, shaking froth on the still green of the grass. We trailed our shadows across the fields, extinguishing the sunshine on the flowers as we went. The air was with the of blossoms.
 
"Look at the cowslips, all shaking with laughter," said Emily, and she tossed back her head, and her dark eyes sparkled among the flow of gauze. Lettie was on in front, flitting darkly across the field, bending over the flowers, stooping to the earth like a Persephone come into freedom. George had left her at a little distance, hunting for something in the grass. He stopped, and remained in one place.
 
Gradually, as if unconsciously, she drew near to him, and when she lifted her head, after stooping to pick some chimney-sweeps, little grass flowers, she laughed with a slight surprise to see him so near.
 
"Ah!" she said. "I thought I was all alone in the world—such a splendid world—it was so nice."
 
"Like Eve in a meadow in Eden—and Adam's shadow somewhere on the grass," said I.
 
"No—no Adam," she asserted, frowning slightly, and laughing.
 
"Who ever would want streets of gold," Emily was saying to me, "when you can have a field of cowslips! Look at that hedgebottom that gets the South sun—one stream and glitter of buttercups."
 
"Those Jews always had an eye to the lucre—they even made Heaven out of it," laughed Lettie, and, turning to him, she said, "Don't you wish we were wild—hark, like wood-pigeons—or larks—or, look, like peewits? Shouldn't you love flying and wheeling and sparkling and—courting in the wind?" She lifted her , and vibrated the question. He flushed, bending over the ground.
 
"Look," he said, "here's a larkie's."
 
Once a horse had left a hoofprint in the soft meadow; now the larks had rounded, the cup, and had laid there three dark-brown eggs. Lettie sat down and leaned over the nest; he leaned above her. The wind running over the flower heads, peeped in at the little brown buds, and bounded off again gladly. The big clouds sent messages to them down the shadows, and ran in raindrops to touch them.
 
"I wish," she said, "I wish we were free like that. If we could put everything safely in a little place in the earth—couldn't we have a good time as well as the larks?"
 
"I don't see," said he, "why we can't."
 
"Oh—but I can't—you know we can't"—and she looked at him fiercely.
 
"Why can't you?" he asked.
 
"You know we can't—you know as well as I do," she replied, and her whole soul challenged him. "We have to consider things" she added. He dropped his head. He was afraid to make the struggle, to rouse himself to decide the question for her. She turned away, and went kicking through the flowers. He picked up the blossoms she had left by the nest—they were still warm from her hands—and followed her. She walked on towards the end of the field, the long of her white scarf running before her. Then she leaned back to the wind, while he caught her up.
 
"Don't you want your flowers?" he asked .
 
"No, thanks—they'd be dead before I got home—throw them away, you look absurd with a posy."
 
He did as he was bidden. They came near the hedge. A crab-apple tree blossomed up among the blue.
 
"You may get me a bit of that blossom," said she, and suddenly added—"no, I can reach it myself," whereupon she stretched upward and pulled several sprigs of the pink and white, and put it in her dress.
 
"Isn't it pretty?" she said, and she began to laugh ironically, pointing to the flowers—"pretty, pink-cheeked , and stamens like yellow hair, and buds like lips something nice"—she stopped and looked at him, with a smile. Then she to the ovary beneath the flower, and said: "Result: Crab-apples!"
 
She continued to look at him, and to smile. He said nothing. So they went on to where they could climb the fence into the spinney. She climbed to the top rail, holding by an oak bough. Then she let him lift her down bodily.
 
"Ah!" she said, "you like to show me how strong you are—a veritable Samson!"—she mocked, although she had invited him with her eyes to take her in his arms.
 
We were entering the spinney of black poplar. In the hedge was an elm tree, with of dark dots pointed against the bright sky, myriads of clusters of flaky green fruit.
 
"Look at that elm," she said, "you'd think it was in full leaf, wouldn't you? Do you know why it's so ?"
 
"No," he said, with a curious questioning drawl of the monosyllable.
 
"It's casting its bread upon the winds—no, it is dying, so it puts out all its strength and loads its with the last fruit. It'll be dead next year. If you're here then, come and see. Look at the , the smooth ivy, with its fingers in the trees' throat. Trees know how to die, you see—we don't."
 
With her whimsical moods she him. She was at the bottom a confusion of emotion, and she wanted to make him likewise.
 
"If we were trees with ivy—instead of being fine humans with free active life—we should hug our thinning lives, shouldn't we?"
 
"I suppose we should."
 
"You, for instance—fancy your sacrificing yourself—for the next generation—that reminds you of Schopenhauer, doesn't it?—for the next generation, or love, or anything!"
 
He did not answer her; she was too swift for him. They passed on under the poplars, which were hanging of green above them. There was a little open space, with tufts of . Lettie stooped over a wood-pigeon that lay on the ground on its breast, its wings half spread. She took it up—its eyes were bursten and ; she felt its breast, the dimming on its throat.
 
"It's been fighting," he said.
 
"What for—a mate?" she asked, looking at him.
 
"I don't know," he answered.
 
"Cold—he's quite cold, under the feathers! I think a wood-pigeon must enjoy being fought for—and being won especially if the right one won. It would be a fine pleasure to see them fighting—don't you think?" she said, torturing him.
 
"The claws are spread—it fell dead off the perch," he replied.
 
"Ah, poor thing—it was wounded—and sat and waited for death—when the other had won. Don't you think life is very cruel, George—and love the cruellest of all?"
 
He laughed bitterly under the pain of her soft, sad tones.
 
"Let me bury him—and have done with the beaten lover. But we'll make him a pretty grave."
 
She a hole in the dark soil, and snatching a handful of bluebells, threw them in on top of the dead bird. Then she smoothed the soil over all, and pressed her white hands on the black .
 
"There," she said, knocking her hands one against the other to shake off the soil, "he's done with. Come on."
 
He followed her, speechless with his emotion.
 
The spinney opened out; the ferns were uncoiling, the bluebells stood grouped with blue curls . In the freer spaces forget-me-nots flowered in nebulæ, and dog-violets gave an undertone of dark purple, with for planets in the night. There was a slight drift of woodruff, sweet new-mown hay, the air under the boughs. On a wet bank was the design of golden saxifrage, unholily as if by its minister, the . George and Lettie crushed the veined of wood-sorrel and broke the silken . What did it matter to them what they broke or crushed.
 
Over the fence of the spinney was the hillside, scattered with old thorn trees. There the little grey held up balls to us unnoticed. What did it matter, when all the great red apples were being shaken from the Tree to be left to rot.
 
"If I were a man," said Lettie, "I would go out west and be free. I should love it."
 
She took the scarf from her head and let it wave out on the wind; the col............