Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: In the black shade of the Varnum spruces he caught up with her and she turned with a quick "Oh!" "Think I'd forgotten you, Matt?" he asked with sheepish glee. She answered seriously: “I thought maybe you couldn't come back for me." "Couldn't? What on earth could stop me?” "I knew Zeena wasn't feeling any too good today." "Oh, she's in bed long ago .” He paused, a question struggling in him. "Then you meant to walk home all alone?" "Oh, I ain't afraid!" she laughed. They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars. He brought his question out. "If you thought I hadn't come, why didn't you ride back with Denis Eady?" "Why, where were you? How did you know? I never saw you!" Her wonder and his laughter ran together like spring rills in a thaw. Ethan had the sense of having done something arch and ingenious. To prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase, and brought out, in a growl of rapture: "Come along." He slipped an arm through hers, as Eady had done, and fancied it was faintly pressed against her side; but neither of them moved. It was so dark under the spruces that he could barely see the shape of her head beside his shoulder. He longed to stoop his cheek and rub it against her scarf. He would have liked to stand there with her all night in the blackness. She moved forward a step or two and then paused again above the dip of the Corbury road. Its icy slope, scored by innumerable runners, looked like a mirror scratched by travellers at an inn. "There was a whole lot of them coasting before the moon set,” she said. "Would you like to come in and coast with them some night?" he asked. "Oh, would you, Ethan? It would be lovely!” "We'll come tomorrow if there's a moon." She lingered, pressing closer to his side. “Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum came just as near running into the big elm at the bottom. We were all sure they were killed.” Her shiver ran down his arm. "Wouldn't it have been too awful? They're so happy!" "Oh, Ned ain't much at steering. I guess I can take you down all right!" he said disdainfully. He was aware that he was "talking big,” like Denis Eady; but his reaction of joy had unsteadied him, and the inflection with which she had said of the engaged couple “They're so happy!” made the words sound as if she had been thinking of herself and him. "The elm is dangerous, though. It ought to be cut down,” she insisted. "Would you be afraid of it, with me?" "I told you I ain't the kind to be afraid," she tossed back, almost indifferently; and suddenly she began to walk on with a rapid step. Explore how Wharton memorably conveys Ethan’s feelings for Mattie at this point in the novel.