John Risca was a strong man, as men count strength. He faced the grim issues of life undaunted, and made his own terms. He growled when wounded, but he bared his teeth and snarled with defiance at his foes. In a bygone age he would have stood like his Celtic ancestors, doggedly hacking amid a ring of slain until the curtain of death was drawn before his blood-shot eyes and he fell, idly smiting the air. In the modern conflict in which, fortunately, human butchery does not come within the sphere of the ordinary man's activities, he could stand with the same moral constancy. But here, when it was a mere question of tearing a gossamer veil from before a girl's eyes, his courage failed him. Such brute dealing, he argued, might be salutary for common clay; but for Stellamaris it would be dangerous. Let knowledge of the fact that there had never been a palace come to her gradually. Already he had prepared the way. Thus he consoled himself, and, in so doing, felt a mean and miserable dog. CHAPTER XIII STELLA loved the garden, even when autumn came and flowers were rare; for still there was the gold and russet glory of the trees. Also the garden was a bit of her Promised Land; the road beyond the gate ran into the heart of the world. And the open air brought strength. On sunny days her wheel-chair was brought down and set on a gravel path, and there, wrapped in furs, she sat, generally alone save for the old hound always on guard beside her. She read, and dreamed her innocent dreams, and looked up at the ever-novel canopy of the sky, exulting quietly in her freedom. Those around her knew her needs and gave her at such times the familiar solitude which she craved. “Don't be left alone, darling, a moment longer than you want,” said Lady Blount. “Too much of that sort of thing is n't good for you.” And Stella, trying to interpret herself, would reply, “I just want to make friends with nature.” “I wish I could understand you, dear, like Walter,” said Lady Blount. “What exactly do you mean?” Stella laughed, and said truthfully that she did not know. Perhaps, it was that, the sea having taken her to its heart, she feared lest earth might not be so kindly, and she sought conciliation. But such flutterings of the spirit are not to be translated into words. A day or two before she had driven through a glade of blazing beech, carpeted deep brown, and the shadows twisted themselves into dim shapes, stealing through the mystery of the slender trunks, and the longing to be left alone among them and hear the message of the woodland had smitten her like pain.