Yet afterward he saw nothing ethereal or remote about her; to his memory she became again a dark-haired girl with thoughtful eyes and animated lips, who leaned back, her hat tossed off, her bare arms folded behind her head, and plied him with friendly questions. The trouble was that every one of the questions, though to her so evidently simple and matter-of-course for him, called a new vision out of the unknown, as the car's headlights, while they climbed the mountain, had kept on painting pictures on the darkness. The simplest things she said presupposed a familiarity with something or other that he was ignorant of: allusions to people and books, associations of ideas, images and metaphors, each giving an electric shock to his imagination, and making him want to linger and question before she hurried him on to the next point.

What she wanted, for her part, was evidently just to be helpful and friendly. She had guessed, perhaps, that there was not much nourishment for him in life at the Tracys', and wondered what direction he would take when that interval was over, as she assumed it would be soon. He acknowledged that he had accepted his parents' proposal to send him to his cousins for his convalescence because it was a way of being brought nearer New York, which at the moment was the place he most wanted to get to; and when she asked why—whether just as a big sight, or with some special object? he answered, feeling himself hot from feet to forehead at the confession, yet unable to hold it back, that, yes, what he wanted was to live in New York and be a writer.

"A writer? I see. But that's interesting." Miss Spear raised herself on her elbow and reached for a cigarette, while her eyes continued to rest on his crimson countenance. "Tell me more about it. What do you want to write?"

He threw back his head and gave back her look with a thumping heart. "Poetry."

Her face lit up. "Oh, but that's splendid! You've written a lot already, I suppose?"

"Not a lot. Some." How flat the monosyllables sounded! And all the while his brain rustled with rich many-branching words that were too tangled up with each other to be extricated. Miss Spear smiled, and said: "This is just the place for poetry, isn't it? Do repeat something of yours."

Vance's heart dropped back to silence. No one had ever before asked him to recite his verses. The inside of his mouth grew parched and there was a buzzing in his head. This girl had commanded him, here in this magical place, to recite to her something he had written! His courage began to ebb away now that he was confronted with this formidable opportunity.

He moistened his dry lips, closed his mind's eyes as if preparing to leap into space, and said: "'Trees.'"

"Is that the title?"