Clasping hands like two children, we stood for a minute in silence, with our eyes on the ruin before us, and the memory of the enchanted garden and our first love in our thoughts. Then, "Oh, Ben, the lilacs!" said Sally, softly. They were there on all sides, floating like purple and white clouds in the wind, and shedding their delicious perfume over the scattered rose arbours and the dwindling box. Light, delicate, and brave, they had withstood frost and decay, while the latticed summer houses had fallen under the weight of the microphylla roses that grew over them. The wind now was laden with their sweetness, and the golden light seemed aware of their colour as it entered the garden softly through the screen of boughs. "Do you remember the first day, Ben?" "The first day? That was when President lifted me on the wall--and even the wall has gone." "Did you dream then that you'd ever stand here with me like this?" "I dreamed nothing else. I've never dreamed anything else." "Then you aren't so very unhappy as long as we are together?" "Not so unhappy as I might be, but, remember, I'm a man, Sally, and I have failed." "Yes, you're a man, and you couldn't be happy even with me--without something else." "The something else is a part of you. It belongs to you, and that's mostly why I want to make good. These debts are like a dead weight--like the Old Man of the Sea--on my shoulders. Until I'm able to shake them off, I shall not stand up straight." "I'm glad you've gone back to the railroad." "There are a lot of men in the railroad, and very few places. The General found me this job at six thousand a year, which is precious little for a man of my earning capacity. They'll probably want to send me down South to build up the traffic on the Tennessee and Carolina,--I don't know. It will take me a month anyway to wind up my affairs and start back with the road. Oh, it's going to be a long, hard pull when it once begins." Pressing her cheek to my arm, she rubbed it softly up and down with a gentle caress. "Well, we'll pull it, never fear," she responded. At our feet the twilight rose slowly from the sunken terrace, and the perfume of the lilacs seemed to grow stronger as the light faded. For a moment we stood drawn close together; then turning, with my arm still about her, we went back over the broken pieces of pottery, and ascending the steps, left the pearly afterglow and the fragrant stillness behind us. Half an hour later, when we were in the midst of our supper, which she had served with gaiety and I had eaten with sadness, a hesitating knock came at the door leading into the dim hall, and opening it with surprise, I was confronted by a small, barefooted urchin, who stood, like the resurrected image of my own childhood, holding a covered dish at arm's length before him.