As I sat, the moon began to rise over the further hills. The rays slanted into the Italian garden, where, seven years before, Mary and I had played like young children. She had returned to her harp and was drawing forth soft chords. The night, however, became so beautiful that I felt I must breathe the outer air. ‘Let us walk together,’ I said. ‘Show me the dragon and the maze where we ran, and the lilies and flowing rushes. The heat of the room oppresses me.’ She led me silently down the broad stone stairs. The dragon was unchanged. ‘We will sit here,’ she said; ‘and you can tell me everything that has happened in the last few years. I have nothing to give in return, for my life has been placid from the very beginning, and the only great excitement I ever had was when you visited Furnivaux before. Rachel says that I have a small soul; it must be so, for the quiet content of this place suits me well. I suppose that I am one of those weeds that root themselves firmly anywhere. Each thing about here I love as if it were a part of me. Now, forgive me for my tediousness, and tell me everything!’ Thus bidden, I began the story of how I had spent the intervening time. There was little worth telling. It was a brief and simple record of dormant faculties and aspirations, when my highest desire had been for undisturbed sleep. Mary listened in silence, and when I had finished, looked up. ‘But the awakening has come now,’ she said very gently. ‘A new future is thrust upon you:--your life will no longer be as it was.’ Somehow as she spoke my head moved nearer hers, and before she could draw back my lips had pressed her cheek. She rose, gasping, then turning on me a look of surprise and wonder, she hurried away. Perhaps some reminiscence of our former racing came to her, for I heard her laugh, light and long and silvery, as her gown glimmered through the yews. When I retired to my room, it was not to sleep. A conflict was raging in heart and brain. Rachel was undeniably the more beautiful: indeed she was by far the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and her wit and power of fascination were incomparably superior to Mary’s. She evidently believed that I _must_ choose her, and so I had fully intended to do until a tone in Mary’s voice and a quick responsive beating of my own heart told me that it could not be. Mary had never imagined that I should take her in preference, but I knew now that whatever love lay in my nature must be placed in her keeping. I had discovered that I wanted no mental stronghold to surround me, but a wife, tender, loving, and dependent.