“Nay, cousin, it is a fancy of mine. I alone am trusted with the keys of the sanctuary. It is I that shall open to you the gate of our Herb-Garden.” It fell back, groaning on its hinges; and she stood inside, smiling again. “Come in, David.” “Do you know,” he said, still standing on the threshold, humouring her mood according to his wont, “that I have actually never trodden this rood of ground before.” She clapped her hands with joy. “Then it is indeed I who will have brought you here,” she cried. “That is right. Oh, cousin, don’t you know, this is the enchanted garden, my garden! Ah, you did not know that, lord of Bindon! You deemed it was yours perhaps, though you never bethought yourself even of visiting it. But it was given to me by a fairy, years and years ago. And it is full of spells and dreams and magic! I will tell you something: That night, when I came back last autumn ... the first thing I did when I went to my room was to open my window that gives on the garden—you see that window there—and I leant out over the whispering ivy leaves to greet my garden. And in the dark of the night I heard it speak to me. And it said: I am still yours—David, come in!” With one of his unconsciously courtly gestures to mark that it was indeed on her invitation that he came upon her ground, he entered slowly, looking at her with a little wonder. For this fantastic Ellinor was as new to him as this day’s dawn. She guessed his thoughts. “I vow,” she said and seemed to shake off her fancy as she might have brushed from before her face a floating gossamer—“I vow that I am becoming infected with some musing sickness! But between you, my cousin star-gazer, and my good alchemist father, it were odd if there were no such humour in the air. Hold my basket, dear David, I will be practical again.” CHAPTER II _EUPHROSINE_, STAR-OF-COMFORT She still took note that, when the living smile Died from his lips, across him came a cloud Of melancholy severe; from which again, Whenever in her hovering to and fro, The lily-maid had striven to make him cheer, There brake a sudden beaming tenderness. —TENNYSON (_Elaine_). “And do you not wish to know,” asked Ellinor, “what has brought me with the dawn to these gardens?” He had been watching silently by her side—watching her, as here she snipped a bundle of leaves and there a sheaf of blossoms, and mechanically extending the basket that she might lay them therein. Now, after a fashion of his, to which she had grown well accustomed, he let fall a glance upon her as one bringing himself back from a distance. She repeated her question, with a little pretence of impatience.