He said to himself, like the incurable child that he was, that when the sun left her hair he would turn home.
III
“I seem to have known you so long that I cannot realize that you have not been here before.”
They had paused at the end of the path leading from his steps into the garden. Valerie had clutched at his arm with the queer choking feeling that the day was too much for her. She saw the gray house, low and rambling, against its background of garden and forest wall. She saw honeysuckle and ivy softening its corners and crawling over its red roof. She saw an enormous magnolia tree filling the air with its exotic scent, bushes of graceful fuchsias, of old-fashioned roses, of oleander and camellias. She saw tumbledown seats that Dane never sat upon, and a stone bowl on a pedestal overrun with a rich, red ivy geranium. And everywhere as a carpet were violets and narcissi and periwinkle and primroses. It was a gloriously untidy garden. Grass grew upon the paths. Weeds flourished in many spots. There was freedom for all things there.
Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass.”
Then he paused wondering if she knew the quotation. She shot, for the first time that day, a provocative look at him.
“And the lady?”
“And now, I hope, the lady, ‘clothed like summer with sweet hours,’” he said, very softly.
She closed her eyes as she felt his arms sweeping about her. And it did not seem in the least absurd that they
