And so he ended with derision for that monstrous suggestion, and a determination utterly to discard it. Yet the thing being always in his mind may have given him thenceforth in Fanchette’s company an air of self-consciousness, which the vicious might interpret if they would into a secret understanding. Let all that pass for the moment. Our theme is still of Isabel and her “young palmer in love’s eye” wandering, yet unchallenged, in their unsoiled Eden. Now June with these bewitched lovers drifted down a golden haze into July, and July itself burned stilly on towards harvest-time. It was the midsummer of their happiness--all the world one soundless tide of light on which their dreaming hearts, like the fairy nautilus, made rainbow sail by mystic strands, and silent moon-drenched gardens, and paths of rippling flame which ran into the sunset. All time was rapture to them, and most when they were silent and together; for speech is but the sorry change of thought, and cannot for all its volume match one golden maxim of the soul. What they felt, each to the other, was better understood unspoken; in sleep alone it found the perfect utterance. One day, loitering so rapt, they came upon a terrace-corner by the house where, at a man’s height above the ground, was a window with a little balcony looking towards the lower gardens. Here were myrtle bushes growing and loading the air with their scent. Beyond, the turf shelved down to meet the leafy margin of the thickets, which enshrined the flowery walks and lily ponds dear to the girl’s heart. She paused and pointed to the window. “Did you know,” she asked, “that was my bower, my oratory?” He shook his head, smiling. “It is,” she said. “Have I not a beautiful altar to worship at?” He understood: “This view? the green dale of quietude, with all its lovely secrets. I like best, Madonna, the lilies of your altar-piece.” “Ah, if one could but see them!” “It is enough to know they are there, as I know the love that is in your heart. It is sweet, I think, in hiding. But some day it will be sweeter to go down and drown among my lilies. Is the basil in bud yet?” “Not yet.” She called him by the name it was only hers to know. He sighed. “It is shyer than these myrtles. Why did we not make them the symbol of our bridal? They have the better right. I wonder what it waits for?--my life’s blood, perhaps, Aquaviva would say.” She cried “Bonbec!” and looked at him with such a white piteousness that his heart smote him. “Beloved,” he whispered: “That was a senseless and a wicked thought. Forgive me for it. But I wish the basil would blossom. Where do you keep it--in that same dear bower?” He stood on tiptoe to peep, but could catch no more than a glimpse of daintily flowered silks and hangings, and gilded mirrors, and a sheen of _marqueterie_ and ormolu, all in the richly fragile fashion of the day. “No,” she said, still pale and troubled: “In my bedroom, which is above.”