It was a June day, and beyond the fir woods that broke the bluster of the south-west winds, a few white clouds floated in a deep blue sky. As for the rosery at Fernhill, no Persian poet could have found a more delectable spot in which to dream through the hours of a scented day, with a jar of purple wine beside him. An old yew hedge, clipped square, closed it in like a wall, with an opening cut at each corner where paths paved with rough stones disappeared into the world without. These four broad, grey paths, the crevices between the stones planted with purple aubretia and star-flowered rock plants, met in the centre of the rosery, where a sundial stood on a Gothic pillar. Next the yew hedge were rambling roses trained upon the trunks of dead fir trees. Numberless little grey paths branched off from the main ones, dividing up the great square court into some two score rose beds. And this June day this secret, yew-walled garden flamed with a thousand tongues of fire. Crimson, old rose, coral pink, blush white, damask, saffron, blood red, snow, cerise, salmon, white, orange, copper, gold, all the colours seemed alive with light, the rich green of the young foliage giving a setting of softness to the splendour of the flowers. James Canterton was the big, placid, meditative creature needed for such a rose garden. He had a table beside him, and on it a litter of things—notebooks, a tobacco tin, an empty wine glass, a book on the flora of China, two briarwood pipes, and a lens set in a silver frame. He was sitting with his feet within a foot of a rose bush planted in a corner of one of the many beds, a mere slip of a tree that was about to unfold its first flower. This rose, Canterton’s latest creation, had four buds on it, three tightly closed, the fourth on the eve of opening. He had christened the new rose “Guinevere,” and there was a subtle and virginal thrill about Guinevere’s first flowering, the outer petals, shaded from coral to amber, beginning to disclose a faint inwardness of fiery gold. Canterton had sat there since eight in the morning, for he wanted to watch the whole unfolding of the flower, and his vigil might continue through most of the morrow. He would be down in the rosery when the dew glistened on the petals, nor would he leave it till the yellow rays of the horizontal sun poured over the yew hedge, and made every flower glow with a miraculous brilliance.