Canterton left her and spent half an hour walking the winding paths of the Japanese garden, crossing miniature waterways, and gazing into little pools. There were dwarf trees, dwarf hedges, and a little wooden temple half smothered with roses in which sat a solemn, black marble Buddha. This Buddha had caused a mystery and a scandal in the neighbourhood, for it had been whispered that Canterton was a Buddhist, and that he had been found on his knees in this little wooden temple. In the pools, crimson, white, and yellow lilies basked. The rocks were splashed with colour. Clumps of Japanese iris spread out their flat tops of purple and white and rose. Fish swam in the pools with a vague glimmer of silver and gold. At the end of half an hour Canterton returned to the walled garden, and found Eve sitting before the picture, her hands lying in her lap. The poise of her head reminded him of “Beata Beatrix,” but her face had far more colour, more passionate aliveness, and there was the sex mystery upon her mouth and in the blackness of her hair. “Ready?” She turned to him and smiled. “Yes, you may look.” He stood gazing at her work in silence, yet with a profound delight welling up into his eyes. She watched his face, sensitively, hardly conscious of the fact that she wanted to please him more than anyone else in the world. “Exquisite! By George, you have eyes!” She laughed softly in a happy, exultant throat. “I surprised myself. I think it must be Lynette’s magic, and the fairies in the Wilderness.” “If you are going to paint like that, you ought to do big things.” “Oh, I don’t know! There are not many people who really care.” “That’s true.” He gazed again at the picture, and then his eyes suddenly sought hers. “Yes, you can see things—you can feel the colour.” “Sometimes it is so vivid that it almost hurts.” They continued to look into each other’s eyes, questioningly, wonderingly, with something akin to self-realisation. It was as though they had discovered each other, and were re-discovering each other every time they met and talked. Lynette reappeared where the long walk ended in a little courtyard paved with red bricks, and surrounded by square-cut box hedges. She had finished her half-hour’s music lesson with Miss Vance, and was out again like a bird on the wing. Canterton had insisted on limiting her lessons to three hours a day, though his ideas on a child’s upbringing had clashed with those of his wife. There had been a vast deal of talking on Gertrude’s part, and a few laconic answers on the part of her husband. Now and again, when the issue was serious, Canterton quietly persisted in having his own way. He never interfered with her multifarious schemes. Gertrude could fuss here, there, and everywhere, provided she did not tamper with Lynette’s childhood, or thrust her activities into the serious life of the great gardens of Fernhill. “Let’s go and have tea in the Wilderness.” “Why not?” “You’ll come, Miss Eve?”