Twenty minutes later, they set off from the stable, she on the dark Morgan, he on the light-grey Belgian. Sabina led at an easy walk down the pathway bordering the garden’s perimeter on the outside, toward the south, crossing the creek by a narrow wooden bridge not far from the point where it twisted its way under the hedge and into the depths of Der Frühlingsgarten and on toward the pinewood.

“Have you recovered from your fall in my uncle Otto’s pond?” Sabina asked as they rode along.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up!”

“It wasn’t really so bad, was it?”

“Humiliating is the word for it! I hated to do that to my father, around all those important people.”

“I thought it was fun!”

“You didn’t mind what your cousin thought to see you traipsing back to the house, your dress all wet and me soaking and dripping all over, everyone laughing?”

“Who cares what she thought?” laughed Sabina. “I still think it was fun!”

“I’ll let you keep your opinion, but it’s a day I’d rather forget!”

They rode on, across the grass on the other side of the creek, until the dirt roadway entered the pinewood. Soon they were enclosed within its shadows. A quietness came over them, and they rode for a good while to no sound other than the steady clomp, clomp, clomp of their horses’ feet along the hard-packed dirt.

“Don’t you just love the smell!” sighed Sabina at length.

Matthew breathed in deeply, and nodded a smile of consenting satisfaction. “There’s nothing quite like a pine forest,” he said, “especially on a warm sunny day. I’ve always thought that there must be some special ingredient in the pine itself—in the needles or the bark or something—that is particularly responsive to the rays of the sun and its warmth. There is an odor released on a warm day that is like nothing in all the world.”

“Why Matthew,” exclaimed Sabina, “you are a lover of nature too! You let me think I was the only outdoorsman.”

“I never said such a thing.”

“You let me think it, all my going on and on about the Alps and our garden!”

“Well I haven’t been to the Alps, or to the seashore very often. But I do love forests!”

“Are there forests where you come from?”

“Are there ever!” answered Matthew. “Why this little thing, as wonderful as it smells, would hardly even qualify to be called a forest where I live. At least where we used to live.”

“Where is that?”

“It’s a state called Montana.”

“Hmm… I’ve heard of New York and California, but not Montana. Is it very beautiful?”