Two generations past a huge old pine had fallen almost across it . Nothing was left of the tree but its crumbling trunk out of which the ferns grew thickly , making a green roof and a lacy screen for the water . A maple-tree grew beside it with a curiously gnarled and twisted trunk , creeping along the ground for a little way before shooting up into the air , and so forming a quaint seat ; and September had flung a scarf of pale smoke-blue asters around the hollow . John Meredith , taking the cross-lots road through Rainbow Valley on his way home from some pastoral visitations around the Harbour head one evening , turned aside to drink of the little spring . Walter Blythe had shown it to him one afternoon only a few days before , and they had had a long talk together on the maple seat . John Meredith , under all his shyness and aloofness , had the heart of a boy . He had been called Jack in his youth , though nobody in Glen St. Mary would ever have believed it . Walter and he had taken to each other and had talked unreservedly . Mr. Meredith found his way into some sealed and sacred chambers of the lad 's soul wherein not even Di had ever looked . They were to be chums from that friendly hour and Walter knew that he would never be frightened of the minister again . `` I never believed before that it was possible to get really acquainted with a minister , '' he told his mother that night . John Meredith drank from his slender white hand , whose grip of steel always surprised people who were unacquainted with it , and then sat down on the maple seat . He was in no hurry to go home ; this was a beautiful spot and he was mentally weary after a round of rather uninspiring conversations with many good and stupid people . The moon was rising . Rainbow Valley was wind-haunted and star-sentinelled only where he was , but afar from the upper end came the gay notes of children 's laughter and voices . The ethereal beauty of the asters in the moonlight , the glimmer of the little spring , the soft croon of the brook , the wavering grace of the brackens all wove a white magic round John Meredith . He forgot congregational worries and spiritual problems ; the years slipped away from him ; he was a young divinity student again and the roses of June were blooming red and fragrant on the dark , queenly head of his Cecilia . He sat there and dreamed like any boy . And it was at this propitious moment that Rosemary West stepped aside from the by-path and stood beside him in that dangerous , spell-weaving place . John Meredith stood up as she came in and saw her -- REALLY saw her -- for the first time .
He had met her in his church once or twice and shaken hands with her abstractedly as he did XXXXX anyone he happened to encounter on his way down the aisle .
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