“Then I can see it all again. We can walk in the garden together and pretend that things are exactly as they were.” “Oh, Dannie!” she cried. “I _can_ call you Dannie, can’t I?” Time slipped away. She was my little sister now--no longer Lady Halloway. At the posts before the passage we alighted--that was the first news the coachman had of whom he had been driving. We went slowly up the lane, where the shadows of the limes groped like tentacles fingering the sunshine. When I felt beneath the creepers and the bell jangled faintly, Ruthita clutched my arm, attempting to appear bold. Hetty stared at us. “Well, I’ll be blowed!” We pushed by her smiling, assuring her that we had no objection. Not until we had rounded the house, did I hear the rattle of the door closing. Nothing ever changed in that walled-in garden. Flowers grew in the same places--crocuses, daffodils, and hyacinths. Peaches on the wall would soon ripen. Presently sunflowers, like sentinels in gold helmets, would stand in stately line. Pigeons strutted on the slates of houses opposite or wheeled against the sky. There was the window of Ruthita’s bedroom, up to which I had so often called. The hole, which had been bricked up between the Favarts’ garden, was still discernible. Everything retained its record; only we had changed. Truants again, stealing an hour together, I listened expectant to hear Hetty call, “Dant-ee. Dant-ee. Bedtime.” The old excitement clutched my heart. Her starched skirt would rustle down the path, and we would run into the gooseberry bushes to hide. I glanced at the study-window. Surely I should see my father seated there, leaning across the desk with his head propped by his arm. Surely that hand of Ruthita’s in my own was growing smaller. I should turn to find a child in a short print-frock, with clusters of ringlets on her shoulders. A shutter in my mind had opened; the past had become present. Ah, but I was no longer anxious to escape. The walled-in garden was all I wanted. I was tired of liberty. I was ready to be commanded. I was willing that others should order my life. That the illusion might not slip from me, I half shut my eyes. Drip, drip, drip, from eaves and branches! The earth was stirring in the gentle quiet. Through drenched bushes and on the vivid stretch of lawn blackbirds were hopping, delving with their yellow bills. Perhaps I was dwindling into a small boy, just as I had once hoped in the forest that I might suddenly shoot up into manhood. How absurd to believe that I was thirty, and had seen so much of disillusionment! That was all a dream out of which I was waking--I had been here all the time in the narrow confines of the walled-in garden. The old enchantment of familiar sensations stole upon me--I was Dannie Cardover of the Red House; playing tricks with his imagination.