The rimu is the most fragile tree on earth. Some poet among the gods more delicate and mystical than the spirits about him drank a nectar prepared to stimulate imagination and dreamed this tree. It was to be a thing of misty shape, as intangible as gossamer, as variable as a cloud. The gods worked with his idea a long time, and at last they fashioned a magic thing of tasselled fringes, its rich green dusted to luminousness by a silver bloom, a vague shape to sway with every breath of wind, to change with every movement of a bird’s wing, so restless and mobile a tree that it would drive an artist to despair to try to catch its form. Nothing but the music of Debussy quivering upon violin strings could adequately suggest its beauty. And the gods had placed it in the fairest setting they could find, in valleys of tropical prodigality among the nikau and the tree-ferns, where its cobwebby loveliness softened the stiff splendours of the puriri and its lacy perfection humbled the arrogance of the kauri, the king of the bush.
This was what Dane liked to think as he looked upon a rimu tree, and he had brought Valerie there because he knew of no fairer gift to give her that day.
After some minutes they turned to look at each other. Tragedy would have come into their lives there and then if either had spoken a word. He saw a quiver on her lips. He drew her down with him on to the rug, and leaning against the seat held her close to him. And so they stayed making no sound to offend the sensitive deities of that enchanted spot. Presently he began to think of her and of the beauty of her hair, for she had taken off her hat, and the sun’s rays lit up her head lying in the hollow of his arm. And he looked into her clear eyes so generously set in her flushed face, and he was glad without any thought of past or future, for that hour alone.
