“Good-morning.” She gave a polite little inclination of her head and Burton removed his hat. “Good-morning,” he answered dejectedly. She went on towards the house, humming softly. He watched until the door had closed behind her; then he threw himself in his chair again and looked smilingly at the faded, bedraggled cluster of tiny crimson roses in his hand. “She’s wonderful,” he said under his breath. “She’s a real Princess, after all, a little five-foot-two Princess, with the most beautiful eyes in the world and the dearest red lips and the pearliest, softest cheeks ever woman had! She’s older than I thought; she must be twenty-one or two. I wonder--but, no, she’s not married; she’s just a girl--a sweet, womanly girl.” He placed a cigarette between his lips but forgot to light it. “Kitty,” he murmured, “Kitty, Kitty of the Roses! Never was there a name that fitted as that does; she could have had no other name! Maud--Alice--Mary--Lilian--Florence--none would have suited her; Kitty was made for her! It never struck me before as being a beautiful name--Kitty. I wonder why? It’s absolutely musical! It’s a poem, a love-song! It’s----” He sat up very straight and scowled at the littered table. “Great Scott! this won’t do! These Enchanted Gardens are dangerous places; they evidently affect the brain.” He rescued his pen from the grass and dipped it into the ink. “Or maybe the heart!” [Illustration] He drew his sheets before him and smoothed and arranged them. Then he frowned intently. Presently he began to write: “The crowning of these columns with the Roman Doric abacus is quite unjustifiable and altogether incongruous to the purist. Yet the effect in the eye of the layman is not unpleasing. It is difficult if not impossible to account----” He looked up from the sheet before him with exultant eyes, the pen poised motionless in mid-air. “I’ll swear there were dimples when she smiled!” he murmured joyously. [Illustration] [Illustration] V There had been a shower in the gray of the morning; Burton remembered hearing the brisk patter of the falling drops against the sounding magnolia leaves while the open casement was still but an oblong of gray-black in the surrounding darkness; and now, at nine o’clock, the garden was still moist in the sunlight and dripping in shadow. The Daphne-tree was gloriously fresh, the honey-flowers were drenched in crystal drops, and the bees, moving hoveringly from spray to spray, were in constant danger of shower-baths. Across the fence the roses were laughing as the sun, fiercely solicitous, dried leaf and bloom. The hedges were festooned with glistening webs of silver and spun glass in which gems trembled and scintillated. The fallen petals, rain-beaten, strewed beds and paths and were washed here and there into tiny ridges of pale colors like the rim of an artist’s palette. And the air, renewed and refreshed, was fragrant with the mingled odors of the blossoms and moist loam.