Christmas Day was bright and frosty, and Canterton wandered out alone after breakfast with Eve’s letter in his pocket. The great nurseries were deserted, and Canterton had this world of his to himself, even the ubiquitous Lavender not troubling to go beyond the region of the hot-houses. Canterton left the home gardens behind, cut across a plantation of young pines, cypresses and cedars towards some of the wilder ground that had been largely left to Nature. Here, under the northerly shelter of a towering fir wood there happened to be an out-cropping of rock, brown black hummocks of sandstone piled in natural disorder, and looking like miniature mountains. Building had been going on here, and it was the building itself that held Canterton’s thoughts. A cottage stood with its back to the fir wood, a Tudor cottage built of oak and white plaster, and deep thatched with blackened heather. The lattices were in, and blinked back the December sunlight. A terrace of flat stones had been laid in front of the cottage, and a freshly planted yew hedge shut in the future garden that was still littered with builders’ debris, mortar-boards, planks, messes of plaster and cement. The windows of the cottage looked southwards towards the blue hills, and just beyond the yew hedge lay the masses of sandstone that were being made into a rock garden. Earth had been carted and piled about. Dwarf trees, saxifrages, aubrietias, anemones, alyssum, arabis, thrift, sedums, irises, hundreds of tulips, squills, crocuses, and narcissi had been planted. By next spring the black brown rocks would be splashed with colour—purple and white, blue and gold, rose, green and scarlet. On the cross-beam of the timber porch the date of the year had been cut. Canterton stood and looked at it, thinking how strange a significance those figures had for him. He took a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and climbed the half finished staircase to one of the upper rooms. And for a while he stood at the window, gazing towards the December sun hanging low in the southern sky. Would she ever come to live in this cottage? He wondered. Canterton rarely discussed his affairs with anybody, and the cottage had been half built before Gertrude had heard of its existence. And when she had discovered it, Canterton had told her quite calmly what it was for. “I shall have to have help here. Eve Carfax may come back. She is trying this berth in London for a year. She understands colour-gardening better than anybody I have come across. If she fails me, I shall have to get someone else. I think Drinkwater is making a very good job of the cottage. I wanted something that is not conventional.” Gertrude had suggested that if the cottage were likely to remain unoccupied for a while she might use it temporarily as a country rest-house for some of a London friend’s rescued “Magdalens.” She had been surprised at the almost fierce way Canterton had stamped on the suggestion.