They were all there, the heavenly company, dimly tinted in crimson, pink, and gold--Rose de Provence, Gloire de Dijon, Damask, Turkish, Cloth of Gold--exquisite ghosts of their ardent selves--immobile phantoms, mystic, celestial, under the high lustre of the stars. Mirror-dark, the round pool's glass reflected a silvery inlay of the constellations; tall trees bordered the wall, solemn, unstirring, as though ranged there for some midnight rite. The thin and throbbing repetition of hidden insects were the only sounds in that still and scented place. They leaned upon the balustrade of stone and looked down into the garden for a while. She stirred first, turning a little way toward him. And together they descended the steps and walked to the pool's rim. Once, while they stood there, she moved away from his side and strolled away among the roses, roaming at random, pausing here and there to bend and touch with her face some newly opened bud. Slender and shadowy she lingered among the unclosing miracles of rose and gold, straying, loitering, wandering on, until again she found herself beside the pool of mirror black--and beside her lover. "Your magic garden is all you promised," he said in a low voice--"very wonderful, very youthful in its ancient setting of tree and silvered stone. And now the young enchantress is here among her own; and the spell of her fills all the world." "Do you mean me?" "You, Karen, matchless enchantress, sorceress incomparable who has touched with her wand the old-familiar world and made of it a paradise." "Because I said I loved you--a little--has it become a paradise? You know I only said '_a little_.'" "I remember." "Of course," she added with a slight sigh, "it has become more, now, since I first said that to you. I shouldn't call it 'a little,' now; I should call it----" She hesitated. "Much?" She seemed doubtful. "Yes, I think it is becoming 'much'--little by little." "May I kiss--your hand?" "Yes, please." "And clasp your waist--very lightly--_this_ way?" "In sign of betrothal?" "Yes." She looked up at him out of the stillest, purest eyes he had ever beheld. "You know best, Kervyn, what we may do." "I know," he said, drawing her nearer. After a moment she rested her cheek against his shoulder. Standing so beside the pool, breathing the incense of the roses, she thought of the dream, and the gay challenge, "Who goes there?" She was beginning to suspect the answer, now. It was Love who had halted her on that flower-set frontier; the password, which she had not known then, was "Love." Love had laughed at her but had granted her right of way across that border into the Land of Dreams. And now, unchallenged, save by her own heart, she had come once more to the borderland of flowers. [Illustration: "Standing so beside the pool, breathing the incense of the roses, she thought of the dream"] "Halt!" said her heart, alert; "who goes there?" "It is I, Karen, wearing the strange, new name of Love----"