For he realized, in one rush of shame, that Gerda was the blackbird!

He realized this before she made a sound other than that long-sustained tremulous whistle. He realized it instantaneously by a kind of sudden absolute knowledge, like a slap in the face.

And then, immediately afterwards, she came forward, quite calmly and coolly, pushing aside the hazels and the elder-bushes.

He found her a different being, when she stood there in front of him, smiling down upon him and removing bits of moss and twigs from her hair. She had lost something from the outermost sheath of her habitual reserve; and like a plant that has unloosed its perianth she displayed some inner petal of her personality that had, until that moment, been quite concealed from him.