The tangle had been cut away and a narrow gravel-path led through the pruned creepers. She made an exclamation of delight. The onyx-pillar stood in an oasis of white—moonflowers, white dahlias, mignonette and narcissus; bars of late lilies-of-the-valley beyond these, bordered with Arum-lilies, white clematis, iris and bridal-wreath, shading out into tender paler hues that ringed the spotless purity like dawning passion. [Pg 325] “White for happiness,” he quoted. “You said that when you brought me here—the day we planted the ramblers. Do you remember what I said? That some day, perhaps, I should love this spot the best of all at Damory Court.” He was silent a moment, tracing with his finger the motto on the dial’s rim. “When I was very little,” he went on,—“hardly more than three years old, I think,—my father and I had a play, in which we lived in a great mansion like this. It was called Wishing-House, and it was in the middle of the Never-Never Land—a sort of beautiful fairy country in which everything happened right. I know now that the Never-Never Land was Virginia, and that Wishing-House was Damory Court. No wonder my father loved it! No wonder his memory turned back to it always! I’ve wanted to make it as it was when he lived here. And I want the old dial to count happy hours for me.” Something had crept into his tone that struck her with a strange sweet terror and tumult of mind. The hand that clutched her skirts about her knees had begun to tremble and she caught the other hand to her cheek in a vague hesitant gesture. The moonflowers seemed to be great round eyes staring up at her. “Shirley—” he said, and now his voice was shaken with longing—“will you make my happiness for me?” [Pg 326] She was standing perfectly still against the sun-dial, both hands, laced together, against her breast, her eyes on his with a strange startled look. Over the hush of the garden now, like the very soul of the passionate night, throbbed the haunting barcarole of Tales of Hoffmann: “Night of stars and night of love—” an inarticulate echo of his longing. He took a step toward her, and she turned like one in sudden terror seeking a way of escape. But he caught her close in his arms. “I love you!” he said. “Hear it now in my bride’s garden that I’ve made for you! I love you, I love you!” For one instant she struggled. Then, slowly, her eyes turned to his, the sweet lips trembling, and something dawning deep in the dewy blue that turned all his leaping blood to quicksilver. “My darling!” he breathed, and their lips met.