"I felt that. But there is something--don't you know there is something?--that guides us.... I lay one night thinking of Sweet Rocket. I could always come back here, just as really--come back from the ends of the earth! I came back often. There has always been, along the garden wall, sweet rocket--dame's violet, you know. Some of it is white and some is purple--shining clusters growing above your waist. I could gather them in my arms and feel them against my cheek. I could get _into_ the dark cedars that come up from the river. I lay in Richmond, more than half feeling, more than half seeing.... There's a country, you know, out of which things come down to you.... It came down--knowledge! I meant to go back to Sweet Rocket." She paused. "Look at that tree--" "It is so splendid! A sugar maple, isn't it? And that one?" "Mountain linden. It puts on a clear, pale gold, like the old saints' haloes." "I hear water." "It is the little stream that we cross. See how sweet and clear and sounding it goes! Hemlock Run. All right, Daniel!" Daniel bent mouth to water and drank. "No check rein?" "No." Gray horse and old phaeton moved again. The wood grew richer and deeper. "We are nearing the river." "And then, in Richmond, you heard about Sweet Rocket?" "Aunt Hester had a letter from Alder. Richard Linden, old Major Linden's nephew, had bought Sweet Rocket. I was glad that some one who must love it was there. Aunt Hester said that he had visited it once or twice as a young boy. He would remember it then as I remembered it. The second letter said that he was almost blind, and alone on the place save for the colored people. Then I saw his advertisement in the Richmond papers. He wanted a secretary, one who could read aloud well. So I answered, and was taken--five years ago." "How old a man is he?" "He is forty-seven and I am forty-four." "You have inner youth--higher youth." "Yes. Childhood there. So has he." "Do you love him, Marget?" "Love him? Yes! But not the once-time way, if that is what you mean. As he loves me, but not the once-time way. So we shall not marry, in the once-time way. But we live here together all the same." "Well, if it is as fair as this road--" "It is just a simple house in the bent arm of a little river and with hills all around, and behind the hills, mountains. There are fields and an orchard and garden. It is hidden like a lost place, and happy like a place for evermore finding itself." "Tell me about Mr. Linden." "No, let us wait for that. Or I can tell outward things--how we live?" "Yes." "He has only a small, fixed income. It wouldn't at all go round the year, so we farm. We have an excellent man, Roger Carter, who lives in the overseer's house. Wheat, corn, buckwheat, hay, and apples! So we live and can buy--though with an elegant spareness--books and red-seal Victor records and more and more flowers for the flower garden." "Of course you have help about the house?"