"That's true romantick," whispered Betty. "See him bow, see him stand up tall and white like a great wax candle." The swansdown tippet rose and fell to the beating of the eager heart beneath. "My charmer takes the sun like a flower," said Mr. Vernon, bending over her hand. Betty's eyes were a very quick and fiery blue as she turned away to her post, and, indeed, the scene would have ravished a block. Never were yews so dark and velvety, so full of whispered secrets, as the gentle wind stirred their crisped leaves continually. In a silence made by cushions of moss set with many green stars that muffled every footstep, the stone image of Cupid, poised upon his damp-stained pedestal caught from the February sunlight the veritable bloom and semblance of divinity. Vernon, as he led Phyllida to the seat and saw her eyes flash over the swansdown muff, was sure that such beauty must capture something of the permanence expressed by the statue and remain for ever young, for ever provocative of desire. High over their heads a flight of pigeons circled against the azure, gathered and broke into a scattered multitude of snowy wings whose fluttering echoes travelled along the sunlight to the sombre heart of the Maze. The simple grace with which Phyllida seated herself held Vernon entranced. He could have sworn that the stone wings of the Cupid trembled faintly as if, animate and inanimate, the whole world stood ready to scale the empyrean. Blinded by an ecstasy of hope, the man forgot himself, discarded the mean ambitions that for so long had guided his actions, and conceived the idea of a fresher existence. Great moments, like great men, have a solitary life, and there was nothing in Phyllida to respond to the fire which he had waked from a pile of ashes. Actually she was wondering whether her dear Amor had remembered Valentine day, whether, indeed, his burning gaze was a prelude to the offer of a trinket. "'Tis surely a pleasant Valentine morning," she murmured screwing up her eyes to the sun. Vernon cursed the want of practice with young misses which had let him forget what every fair esteemed a man's sacred duty. However, he was a resourceful gentleman and, without any perceptible hesitation, produced from his pocket a paste brooch cut to the likeness of a basket of twinkling blue forget-me-nots.