Because Barry had hinted it annoyed him to have her in the house while he was trying to write, Berenice had decided to go out for an hour or so, to give the poor lad a chance. And for a few minutes it bothered her to be idling, whereas there were so many little things that needed her attention. A house became so weary. It needed a flick of the hand here and there, a touch to flowers. But the white road, and the arching blue-green trees, and the drift of the dogwood—a cloud, not a flower, did it seem, so delicately balanced was it in the May air—all these took her eyes, and the immense miracle of spring drew her thoughts from the gracious artifice of the house. How gently, how imperceptibly it came, a little curling wave of the west wind, and the clearly pitched note of an adventuring bird! It was like the moon, spring was; a clear thin line of silver in the gray sky, like the minute green of the waking willow-tree, and it grew ... under your eyes was its sweet benevolence. And it was hard to go to sleep at night, so much was being accomplished, for fear you would miss some phase of the return of beauty. Oh, the little birds ... so fussy, so intense about their nests. The showers like great sheets of silver; and after each the slim trees were more like pretty ladies, and the great thick trees like pleasant stalwart men. And the flowers came shyly, demurely, just as young girls might come; just as she herself, Berenice, felt, acted when she was fifteen, and was brought into a roomful of strange people.  
And she stopped for an instant at the dark pool where the little turtles were busy, swimming to and fro, a clear-cut, fine line on the dusky water, a minute head with crystalline beads of eyes, just showing ... and if they thought you were watching them they dived—a flick and they were gone—and if you saw clearly enough you could notice their flippers waggle slowly as they made for the downy bed of the pool. And some kept fearfully quiet, sitting on stones, or on logs, and at any quick movement you made, they plumped like stones. And the great trees around so much alive, so patient... She could understand how poets of an older, simpler age saw dryads in them. Pan she could not understand, nor satyrs, but dryads were sib to her, young shy women in garments of apple-green. You could tell a good picture of a tree from a bad one that way: some had dryads in them and some were only wood.
 
So many thoughts were in her, so keenly did she feel a kinship with the trees, with the singing birds, with the west wind that cleared the air, that she wished she had some one to speak to about it. But a great shyness... And perhaps, even, it could n't be said in words, perhaps music. Well, hardly even that. She had tried to speak to Barry about it. But Barry had kissed her and thought her a moonstruck kid, as he said. Poor Barry! Directors of periodicals were so hard on him! It was dreadful to hurt him that way. Though she confessed the treason with a shock to herself, she found it hard, well-nigh impossible, to read what he wrote. It was hard for her to understand artificial women and noble men. All she knew was nature, and that was not artificial. Nor was it noble, either, she thought; it had just a sweet, harmonious kindliness. There could be nobility only where ignominy existed too—and in nature was no ignominy. She wished she knew more about men and women, for Barry's sake, to understand these matters he wrote of, passion and crime. But dramatic passion seemed so needless in her eyes, and crime was so sickly; she just felt a pity for it, a sense that they, poor people, must be crazy to do such things. Oh, she wished she understood—could help him! She remembered when, over a year ago, a little periodical had decided to print one of his writings, th............