Amazingly, at the turn of a white wall, a gate was opened and she who had opened it leaned into the night as if she were looking for something. There was a fluttering in the breast of Matthew so that he looked down to see if the bird had come back. But no bird was there. And it smote him that the lady's beauty, and surely her goodness, were great enough so that of them something might be created, as he would fain have created marvels from the sky. "I would like to make your beauty into something other," he said to her. "I cannot think whether this would be a song or a picture or a vision." She looked at him with as much pleasure as if he had been an idea of her own. "Tell me about my beauty," she bade him. "What thing is that?" "Nay, that will take some while," Matthew said. "If I do that, I must come in your garden." Now, such a thing had never happened in the town. And as this seemed why it never happened, it seemed likely to go on never happening indefinitely. But loneliness and the longing to create and the conjecture about life have always been as potent as battles; and beauty and boredom and curiosity have had something to do with history as well. "Just this once, then," said the lady, and the gate closed upon the two. Here was a garden like Matthew's own, but indefinitely atmosphered other. It spoke strangely of a wonted presence, other than his own. In his own garden he fitted as if the space for him were niched in the air, and he went as a man accustomed will go without thinking. But here he moved free, making new niches. And whereas on his own walks and plots he looked with lack-lustre eye as a man looks on his own gas-jet or rain pipe, now Matthew looked on all that he saw as on strange flame and sweet waters. And it was not the shrubs and flowers which most delighted him, but it was rather on a garden bench the lady's hat and gloves and scissors. "How pleasing!" said he, and stopped before them. "Do you find them so?" asked the lady. And when he told her about her beauty, which was more difficult to do than he had imagined and took a longer time, she said:-- "There can be no other man in the world who would speak as you speak." On which he swore that there was no man who would not speak so, and likewise that no man could mean one-half what he himself meant. And he looked long at her house. "In those rooms," he said, "you go about. I wish that I could go about there." But that frightened her a little. "In there," he said, "are the lamps you light, the plates you use, the brush that smooths your hair. How strange that is." "Does it seem strange?" she asked. "Sometime I will go there," said he, and with that he thought that the bird once more was fluttering at his breast. And again there was no bird.