In the hushed room at Harbor Light there was darkness--and there was the fragrance of many flowers. Out of the darkness a faint voice wavered, "Lilacs?" The nurse bent over the high hospital bed. "Roses--lovely ones." A long silence. Then, "Lovely ladies?" said the faint voice. He could see them with his eyes shut--a whole procession of pretty ladies, all floating in the dimness. Just their faces on a broad band of light, over which the gray mists rolled now and then and blurred the outlines. Then the faces would again shine out, smiling--gay and sad, pensive and glad. "Lovely ladies," he said again. They followed him into his dreams, and kept him company until the pain began--that racking, wrenching pain; then they flew from him and left him alone to suffer. After a long time, when the nurse had bared his shoulder and had pricked it with something that felt like a pin, they came back--all those lovely faces; only now they seemed to peep from behind clouds of smoke, heavier than the mists, and more tantalizing in their concealments. So they came and went through the long night, leaving when the pain racked him, returning always when the nurse did things to his shoulder with her little shining instrument. They fled from him, too, when he opened his eyes and saw hazily that there was a light, and a great many flowers, and that Anthony was standing in a sort of bower of them. And Anthony was saying to some unseen person who stood at the head of the bed, "Did he notice the flowers?" "Yes." "Good--you can take them out now--nurse." He had tried to tell Anthony about the pretty ladies. But they had come back and were whirling about him on that band of light--and there was one with dark hair with a crescent moon above the parting--and there was one who came closer than the others, and who had hair that shone like gold, and a little white face. "Betty----" The nurse did not catch the name--but Anthony's quick ear was at once attentive. "She loves you, dear boy; and I'm going to make you well, so you may marry her." CHAPTER XXII THE ENCHANTED FOREST Far up in the hills the Beautiful Lady went daily to the post-office for her mail. It was a long walk, and the path skirted the edge of the forest. Leaving the path one entered upon a world of dim green light, a world of soft whispering sounds, a world of enchantment; and it was into this world that Diana's feet strayed as she came and went. It was here she spent most of her mornings; it was here she found the solitude she craved. The guests at the mountain house called the Beautiful Lady exclusive; but it was an exclusiveness which matched her air of remoteness, and since such friendships as she encouraged were with those who were lonely and tired and sick, she made no enemies by her withdrawal from the conventional life of the place.