“I expect you will like your cigar in the garden with Nita,” he said, pushing the box across the table to his guest. “I’ve got some letters to write.” When he reached his study he took Ruth’s telegram out of his pocket-book and, lighting a match, burned it very carefully to ashes. “Bless their small minds,” he said. CHAPTER VII Ruth met North as he came up the garden path. “So you have come this afternoon! I did so hope you would.” “What is it?” he asked. “Nothing wrong with the farm?” “Wrong with the farm!” Ruth laughed. “Now just _feel_ it.” It was steeped in sunshine and the scent of violas. On the garden wall the pigeons cooed sleepily. From the river came the lilt of a child’s laugh. “It feels all right,” said North gravely. “Just as happy and sound and wholesome as can be,” she said. “I asked you to come because something wonderful—I believe wonderful—has happened. I felt I must tell you at once. And I want to ask you things, want to ask you quite terribly badly. Come up and sit by the blue flower border. I have the chairs there. It is at its very best.” “So you have kept that too,” said North, even as his daughter had said. “It is one of the many beautiful things I found here,” she answered. “The place is full of thoughts just like that. I hope I have not lost any, but if I have they will come back.” She stopped to lift up some of the frail nemophilas. Just so North had seen women arrange their children’s hair. “Are not the delphiniums in perfection? They always look to me as if they were praying.” Now years ago, standing in just that selfsame spot, Dick Carey had said that very same thing. It came back to North in a flash, and how he had answered: “I should think those meek droopy white things look more like it.” For a moment he hesitated. Then he gave her the same answer. “Oh no!” she exclaimed. “To pray you must aspire. And they must be blue.” Dick Carey had said, “Prayer is aspiration, not humility. Besides, they’re not blue.” Again that sense of well-being which had belonged to the companionship of his friend stole over North. Again the bitterness and pain seemed to fade and melt. The present took on a new interest, a new understanding. He gave himself up to it with a sigh of content as he dropped into the chair by Ruth Seer’s side. The warmth of the June afternoon, the sleepy murmur of the life of the farm, the hum of bees, that wonderful blue, it was all part of it. “Now light your pipe and be very comfortable,” she said, and left him alone while the peace and beauty soaked in. Left him alone for how long he did not know. When you touch real rest, time ceases. Presently he re-lit the pipe which he had lighted and left to go out. “Now,” he said, “tell me. I am ready to be convinced of anything wonderful, just here and now.”