The light wind brought up waves of fragrance from the tangle of roses under Hildegarde’s window, and the little path stretched away to indefiniteness in the starlight, till it was lost long before it reached the garden’s end. The limits of the narrow inclosure, so sharply drawn by day, were nobly enlarged, lost even, at this hour, in the dim reaches of green turned silver and black, as the moon came over the tops of the conifers. Down by the arbor vitæ hedge growing things that Hildegarde had planted sent their souls to her across the lawn, piercing the heavier air of roses with arrowy shafts of spicy sweetness. On such a night no one is alone. Where two go down a darkling walk, or sit on the steps in the dusk, others gather round them. Invisible presences—the singers, the beautiful ones, the stern doers of great deeds—join us common folk, and give us a share in their glory or their steadfast pain. Hopes of our own, that look too large by day—too dim and inaccessible, they come walking in our garden at such an hour, beckoning us or looking, smiling, on. Living men, rumored to be far away, suddenly stand before us. Women who have been long aloof draw near. All the barriers go down. Even the dead come home. John Galbraith was down there, where Bella’s white gown shone among the trees, and John Galbraith was sitting between those other two on the steps. And Cheviot knew it. Hildegarde was reminded of the visible presence by his saying, in a low voice, that he understood the reason of his ill-success with her. “What do you mean?” “Oh, Bella told me. Years ago. When she was so little you thought she—” “Told you what?” “That you had been in love with John Galbraith since you were sixteen.” “But you must see that’s absurd. I’ve never even seen him!” “I wish to God you had! Then you might get over it.” Hildegarde roused herself to say with equal emphasis, “You are really talking the greatest foolishness—” “Haven’t you got his picture in your room this moment?” “I have the picture he—had taken for Bella.” “Before he ever met Bella you had a picture of Galbraith. You used to wear it. Bella said—” “You seem to forget you’re talking about what happened when I was a little school-girl, and about an old—a very old friend of my family. We all have pictures of Mr. Galbraith—and, why, there’s one of you there, too.” “On the altar?” (Oh, Bella! Bella! How could you!) “The one on the flower-table was put there because Bella asked me to. It’s not there any more. And while it was, I looked upon it as the future husband of my dearest friend.” But the description of Bella sounded suddenly ironic. It hurt. For Cheviot was the man who all along had laughed at girls’ friendships, and all along he had known that Bella was capable of—