fact, but in dreams. Of course she had thought of a possible lover and
husband, and that some day he might come, and she resented the
supposition that John Mangam might be he, but she held even her
imagination in a curious respect. While she dreamed of love, she
worshipped at the same time.

When she had stepped lightly over the hedge and was moving among the
lilies in the strange garden where she had no right, she was beautiful
as any nymph. Now that she was in the midst of the lilies, it was as if
their fragrance were a chorus sung with a violence of sweet breath in
her very face. She felt exhilarated, even intoxicated, by it. She felt
as if she were drawing the lilies so into herself that her own
personality waned. She seemed to realize what it would be to bloom with
that pale glory and exhale such sweetness for a few days. There were
other flowers than lilies in the garden, but the lilies were very
plentiful. There were white day-lilies, and tiger-lilies which were not
sweet at all, and marvellous pink freckled ones which glistened as with
drops of silver and were very fragrant. There were also low-growing
spider-lilies, but those were not evident at this time of night, and the
lilies-of-the-valley, of course, were all gone. There were, however,
many other flowers of the old-fashioned varieties--verbenas
sweet-williams, phlox, hollyhocks, mignonette, and the like. There was
also a quantity of box. The garden was divided into rooms by the box,
and in each room bloomed the flowers.

Sarah moved along at her will through the garden. Moving from enclosure
to enclosure of box, she came, before she knew it, to the house itself.
It loomed up before her a pale massiveness, with no lights in any of the
windows, but on the back porch sat the owner. He sat in a high-back
chair, with his head tilted back, and his eyes were closed and he seemed