“One feels it so much in a garden,” she said. “I have never lived in a garden of my own. This is not mine, but I have been living in it--with Kedgers. One is so close to Life in it--the stirring in the brown earth, the piercing through of green spears, that breaking of buds and pouring forth of scent! Why shouldn't one tremble, if one thinks? I have stood in a potting shed and watched Kedgers fill a shallow box with damp rich mould and scatter over it a thin layer of infinitesimal seeds; then he moistens them and carries them reverently to his altars in a greenhouse. The ledges in Kedgers' green-houses are altars. I think he offers prayers before them. Why not? I should. And when one comes to see them, the moist seeds are swelled to fulness, and when one comes again they are bursting. And the next time, tiny green things are curling outward. And, at last, there is a fairy forest of tiniest pale green stems and leaves. And one is standing close to the Secret of the World! And why should not one prostrate one's self, breathing softly--and touching one's awed forehead to the earth?” Mount Dunstan turned and looked at her--a pause in his step--they were walking down a turfed path, and over their heads meeting branches of new leaves hung. Something in his movement made her turn and pause also. They both paused--and quite unknowingly. “Do you know,” he said, in a low and rather unusual voice, “that as we were on our way here, I said of you to Penzance, that you were Life--YOU!” For a few seconds, as they stood so, his look held her--their eyes involuntarily and strangely held each other. Something softly glowing in the sunlight falling on them both, something raining down in the song of a rising skylark trilling in the blue a field away, something in the warmed incense of blossoms near them, was calling--calling in the Voice, though they did not know they heard. Strangely, a splendid blush rose in a fair flood under her skin. She was conscious of it, and felt a second's amazed impatience that she should colour like a schoolgirl suspecting a compliment. He did not look at her as a man looks who has made a pretty speech. His eyes met hers straight and thoughtfully, and he repeated his last words as he had before repeated hers. “That YOU were Life--you!” The bluebells under water were for the moment incredibly lovely. Her feeling about the blush melted away as the blush itself had done. “I am glad you said that!” she answered. “It was a beautiful thing to say. I have often thought that I should like it to be true.” “It is true,” he said. Then the skylark, showering golden rain, swept down to earth and its nest in the meadow, and they walked on.