lonely grief to the attainment of quiet. She, too, could say it had been good--and with how far more reason than he! He saw his father--weak, hot-headed, swayed by passion and selfishness and regret--his father who had preferred conventional safety to this hill-hung garden in Provence, where he could have dreamt the greatest dream of all. He saw himself as he was, and there followed a twin-vision of how he would be lying cold and pulseless in a few weeks' time, and of how he might have lived in this city of dreams had he found it with his life still his own. He would indeed have dreamt the greatest dream of all--the dream that was life at its fullest. "It is the good woman who gives and the good man who creates. Take what is left to you of life and make with it" . . . so wrote his mother, and like an answer flashed the words of the peasant woman in the church, "C'est l'enfant qui donne courage!" _The greatest dream of all!_ He looked up and saw Candide, large and serene, coming towards him down the path, her skirts swinging from her broad hips. He stood up, and for a moment they faced each other in silence. She was just thirty and in some ways looked more, because of the solidity of her well-poised figure; and her clear eyes, rimmed with black round each iris, were not the ignorant eyes of a child, they were the eyes of a woman who faces knowledge naturally and patiently. Big-boned, and, but for the whiteness of her skin, with a something rockhewn about her face, her only beauty was that of health and a certain assurance which spoke of perfect poise. She was what Bernardy, in that moment's clarity of vision, knew her for--a woman born to be mother of men. He took a step towards her with the gesture of a frightened child, and with her big hands over his she drew him to the stone bench and sat beside him. He told her everything, simply and quickly, because he hated explanations, and was impatient that they were necessary to her. When he had made an end she said: "Do you know why I blushed last night when my grandmother recognized you?" "No," replied Bernardy, startled out of himself yet pricked to interest. "Because my grandmother has always made me wait for you. . . ." "Candide! Candide!" cried Bernardy, the child merged in the waxing possessiveness of the man, "shall we dream my last few weeks together, you and I?" "You do not love me, that is so, is it not?" she asked. "I am not in love with you, no. That is all spent. If you were any other woman I would lie to you. But it seems to me it matters very little whether I am or not. It is not that I feel I cannot love, but as though I had got through it and out the other side. . . ." "No, it does not matter," said Candide. "What matters is that I can give to you and you to me. We will make life, you and I."