(_From the steps to the Butler_) I'll be upstairs. (_Seeing the hall empty, the young people who have looked in occasionally from the conservatory, enter and take possession_) RALPH ARDSLEY. (_From the landing_) Hello, Gladys! GLADYS EGERTON. Hello, Ardsley! RALPH ARDSLEY. (_Touching his throat_) Stunning. GLADYS EGERTON. Thank you. (_Ardsley disappears after the others. Mrs. Orr enters, forward right, and is later joined by Mrs. Egerton_) MRS. ORR. You surely have not spoken of this to him? MRS. EGERTON. The other night I started to. MRS. ORR. How could you! (_Mrs. Egerton glances back uneasily into the room_) MRS. ORR. They're all right. Let's go here behind the pines. MRS. EGERTON (_Beckons to the Butler_) Serve them the lunch now, Charles. (_The Butler goes into the room, forward right. The two women pass left, where they are somewhat shut in by the pines_) MRS. ORR. What did he say? MRS. EGERTON And then--I don't know--something in his face-- Perhaps the wonder that I knew would come That such a thing--If people only knew-- Donald is not the hard unfeeling man-- And knowing this---- (_She hesitates_) MRS. ORR. And knowing what, my dear? MRS. EGERTON. My heart rose up and I--I simply said That Harry had heard a sighing from the walls. I told him so much, for it's worried me. And he at once---- MRS. ORR. (_With spirit_) I know. 'The pines!' MRS. EGERTON. 'The pines!' MRS. ORR. I knew it! MRS. EGERTON. 'The pines!' And walked the floor and laughed; And such a heart-free laugh I have not heard In twenty years. 'The pines!' MRS. ORR. 'The pines!' Of course. MRS. EGERTON. Feeling---- MRS. ORR. Yes, yes! MRS. EGERTON. He had caught the very soul Of the forest. MRS. ORR. And the triumph of it all! MRS. EGERTON. Ah, no one knows how many, many years Donald has dreamed of this, how all his thought And all his---- (_Stands regarding the young people dancing_) MRS. ORR. One has but to look at it. MRS. EGERTON. Yet not for it as his, not that at all, But for the building of it. MRS. ORR. Of course. MRS. EGERTON. And now That it has taken form you cannot think How like a boy he is, how eagerly He flees here from the business of the day And how he walks about enjoying it. 'Tis like the sea. When he is here alone The burden of his great business falls away And he is young again. I sometimes feel, Lying in bed at night and knowing he Is walking here alone, the lights turned low, And listening for the sighing of the pines, That somehow 'tis a woman he has made And that she whispers to him in these hours, Comes to him beautiful from out the pines After his long, long wooing of her---- MRS. ORR.