The sun was up but not yet stripped for the long day's race to the west. The eastern skies still gleamed through a faery haze with the soft iridescence of a young ormer shell, the tender pinks and greens and golds of the new day's birth-chamber mellowing upwards into the glorious blue of a day of days. 'The year's at the spring, The day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled: The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world!' The lilt of the joyous words had often been with him as he sped through the sleeping fields to his morning plunge. This day of days, as though his soul forecasted what was coming, they sang in his heart and on his lips. His cure was surely near completion. The salt was regaining its savour. Life was worth living again. And it was then, when he had come through the valley and was ready to climb again, that the glory came to him. As the two friends sprang lightly over the turf wall into the garden of the Red House, they saw a sight which one of them will not forget as long as he lives. In the gap of the tall hedge, where the path led down to the cottage,--ringed in its darkness like a lovely picture in a sombre frame, with a pale eucalyptus rising stately on either side; and behind it all, and gleaming softly through and round it all, the tender glories of the new day,--stood a girl in a dove-coloured dress, bareheaded, holding the dew-pearled branches apart with her two hands, and gazing at him with wide eyes, and parted lips, and startled face. And the girl was Margaret Brandt. IV Graeme's first thought was that he was dreaming. He blinked his eyes to make sure they were not playing him false. If she had disappeared at that moment, he would have sworn to hallucinations and the visibility of spirits to the day of his death. But she did not disappear, and Punch proved her no spirit by stalking gravely up to give her welcome. Without taking her startled eyes off Graeme, she dropped one white hand on to the great brown head and the diamonds sprinkled her dove-coloured dress. "Mr. Graeme!" she said, in a voice which very fully expressed her own doubts as to his reality also. "Mar--Miss Brandt? ... Is it possible?" They had both drawn nearer, he along the broad gravel walk, she along the narrow path between the eucalyptus trees. "Are you quite sure you are real?" he asked breathlessly, and for answer she laughed and stretched a friendly hand towards him. He took it with shining eyes, and then bent suddenly and kissed it gently, and his eyes were shining still more brightly as she drew it hastily away. "But whatever brings you here?" she asked abruptly. "We're just out of the sea,"--and the joy of the sea and the morning, and this greatest thing of all, was in his face. "But _why_ are you here? What are you doing here?" "Doing? We're living here."