“Well, we’ll have to slow down. I’m out of breath.”

“No, let’s just walk and be silent,” she said as he took her hand again, “and look at everything.”

“It’s quite a world,” Joel said, looking up at blue sky through the branches.

“Those are beeches. See how tightly furled the leaves are still—little brown needles. But any day now they’ll open like tiny hands.—No,” Cathy corrected herself, “that isn’t right. A leaf isn’t like a hand. My English teacher says I have to look harder at things to get them right. You know what, Joel? She says poems are made with words, not with feelings—but maybe you have to have the feeling first to want to find the right words.”

“Stop talking, will you?” Joel said. “Let’s drink the air.”

“Let’s see how many birds we can hear!”

“I don’t care how many. I just want to be!”

It was hard for Cathy to keep still, bubbling over as she was with things to say and to ask Joel, but she managed it for some minutes, partly because he was holding her hand so hard.

“There,” he said gently, “now we’ve landed. You can’t just talk your way into landing—you have to let it happen, give it time.”

This was a new concept for Cathy and she thought about it before she said, “Yes, I see. You’re so wise, Joel.”

Joel took a deep breath. “I feel immense,” he said.

“We’re huge,” Cathy agreed. “We’re as high as mountains and as deep as rivers. We’re all natural things rolled into one.”

“And just what has happened to us? Do you know? You said we were all right.”

“I don’t know, Joel. I think you’ve been making magic. I feel so …” She hesitated before the word “safe” and did not, after all, utter it.

“Where are these flowers, anyway?”

“Just a little farther. We’re almost there.”

“Doesn’t seem as though anything could flower. It’s all so sodden on the ground.”

“They’re under the leaves, Joel, and sometimes even under snow. That’s why they’re so wonderful.”

They had turned off the road now, down a woodsy path that led to the pond, and for the first time since they had started out, with the sense of being out of sight of anyone, in a secret spring world, Cathy suddenly felt self-conscious and slipped her hand out of Joel’s, almost running as they neared the arbutus place.

“Don’t be in such a hurry, Cathy,” Joel said sharply. “We have to talk.”

She stopped short then.

“After all, I haven’t seen you for ages.”

“But everything’s all right, isn’t it?—now, I mean.”

She caught the slight wince on Joel’s face, usually so open.