The house belonging to this wonderful garden was more or less to match. It had begun life quite as a small house: but the magic of the garden had lured it on to venture farther and farther into the enchanted ground, until finally it grew into a very large house indeed. And one could not really blame it for stretching out longing arms and pointing willing feet towards all the beauty which surrounded it: one felt that one would have done exactly the same in its place. Fay and I had many excursions into this modern fairyland, as the chatelaine thereof was an old friend of ours who loved to share with others the joy of her Garden of Dreams; so we went there often. But one special excursion stands out in my memory above all the rest. It was on a Saturday afternoon, and Fay and I had been having tea in the Garden of Dreams. It was glorious weather, and there were many interesting people there--as indeed there usually were: choice spirits flourished in the Garden of Dreams as well as choice flowers. We were all grouped about near the sky-paved fountain after tea, holding sweet converse with friends new and old, when a man and a woman came round the corner of the house to greet our hostess. They were by no means young; on the sunny side of fifty, I should say, by which, as an old Bishop once explained, he meant the side nearest heaven. Fay would consider them quite old, I felt sure: but I saw the old youth in them, which I had known when I was little more than a boy and they in the full zenith of their successful career, and so they would never seem old to me. The man had a worn, tired face, and the woman was plump and cheerful and well dressed. But the sight of them carried me back to the time when he was a rising star in the political firmament, and she an equally brilliant planet in the constellation of society: and when I lived in London, and read for the Bar, and waited for the briefs that never came. His name in those days had been Paul Seaton, and his success had been brilliant and rapid. He was a nobody when he entered Parliament; but his marked talents and undoubted ability soon made him a name in the House of Commons, while his marriage to a woman of position and fortune and considerable charm assured his position in society. He was one of those brilliant young politicians who start life with the intention of setting the Thames on fire and the world in order, and exchanging old lamps for new, wherever they have the chance; but although he succeeded in attaining a place in the Government, and then a seat in the Cabinet, the Thames remained too damp to ignite, the world became increasingly out of order, and the new lamps lost infinitely more in magical properties than they gained in additional candle-power.