Now come into the wood and we’ll listen for nightingales.”

The brake, which had a ride running through it, looked black and forbidding. A network of green caterpillars swaying in the breeze defended the entrance to the ride.

“It’s getting awfully dark,” Virginia said. “Oh, Robin, let’s go home.”

But Robin had already climbed the gate and was waiting for her impatiently among the dangling caterpillars. Once more he had cocked his head on one side, and he was listening, not for the nightingale’s song, but for the squeal of a rabbit. Last night he had set half a dozen traps along the edge of the wood, and he had forgotten to inspect them in the morning. This was a shameful thing, and contrary to his nature; for he was not thoughtlessly cruel, despite his preoccupation with killing beasts and birds. Robin poached indefatigably, partly for profit but mainly for pleasure, and although he would poach anything from a brace of pheasants to a salmon, or even a fallow-deer from the Park, he had no interest in lawful game, and always refused the kindly invitations of local landlords to join their shooting-parties. Such orderly sport bored him; but in the woods at night “at the season of the year,” holding his breath, straining his ears for the sound of a twig cracking beneath the keeper’s boot, every nerve deliciously a-tingle —there he found true happiness. It was better even than sunsets or girls.

He had remembered his traps remorsefully just before he called for Virginia; and he had brought her up to the birch-wood for no other reason than that he wanted to put the rabbits out of their misery. Virginia, however, hesitating at the gate, seemed to think she would be outraged if she ventured over it. At last she took the plunge—literally, for her high heel caught in the top bar and she went head first into the bracken. Robin picked her up and, taking her hand firmly in his, led her unprotesting down the sepia path which was like a tunnel between the trees.

After about a hundred yards the path became green again, and with deep thankfulness Virginia perceived at the farther end of the tunnel a shining patch of sky. They had come to the other side of the wood, where Robin had set his traps; and as they emerged into the twilight three deep bubbling notes suddenly rang out over their heads, jug, jug, jug, so close that Virginia started. There was a pause, while Robin whispered “Be quiet” and drew her to his side. Then the bubbling started again—it was as if a number of stones were being dropped one after another down a very deep well and the successive plops were echoing musically upwards—but this time it didn’t die away, the melodious bubbles grew bigger and came quicker until the notes seemed to shower down in a silver spray, a fountain of notes, a cascading waterfall of sound. And the nightingale was answered or challenged by another along the edge of the wood, and two more began to sing out of the blackness of the ride, and just within earshot a fifth joined in the chorus. It was as if the very trees were singing.

Robin stood entranced. Bird-song at dawn and dusk always moved him, and dawn and dusk were his favourite times of day. He was, indeed, a creature of the half-light, never so contented as when with his gun under his arm he lurked by a willowy pool or in the rushes by the river, waiting for the swift teal and widgeon or the wild duck with their panting wings. At such times the pastel shades of sky and water, the light on the land intensifying or fading, gave him the keenest joy; and he never discovered any inconsistency in his appreciation of beauty and his purpose to slay something beautiful.

But though he had listened to the birds so often in the exquisite moment of the longest shadow, he had never experienced anything quite so dramatic as this, nor heard the nightingales in a lovelier setting, with the delicate birch branches fretting the argent sky, meadowsweet and campion at his feet, and the silver-white trunks rising ghostly all about him. Because he was moved he imagined Virginia must be moved too, and thought himself for a moment to be in love with her as he let his hand rest lightly on her arm just above the elbow and then brought it slowly upwards underneath her sleeve.

“Little tiny throats,” he whispered, “pulsing and swelling. Windpipes no thicker than the inside of a grass stem. Lungs as big as the end of my thumb. A heart not much larger than a pea, but beating oh so quickly. How do they do it, Virginia, how do they do it?”

She was silent, and he thought she must be caught up in the wonder of it too; she gave a little shudder and he thought it was acquiescence. He increased the pressure of his hand.

“Robin—” she said, in a queer tone.

“Yes.”

“There’s something horrible—one of those caterpillars —crawling on the back of my neck.”

Love is a strong plant, but how tender a seedling. Let it but once take hold and it will withstand the cruel frosts and the perfidious winds: not even the long drought of a heart unresponding will wither it. Yes, but before it has rooted it is as frail as a tropic orchid in a wintry clime. The soil may be fertile, the tilth well prepared, the season favourable and all the stars propitious; yet if there blow then the merest ghost of an intempestive zephyr, the seedling will droop, the bud will canker, the young stem collapse, and in the morning there will be nothing left but a vanishing smudge on the earth which failed to quicken it.

So now Robin’s seedling withered.

His hand fell away from her elbow.

“Please take it off,” she said. She bent her head forward and he plucked the little green looper from the very spot where a soft imperceptible down ran between her shoulder-blades.