Is memory busy at her heart? We think not, or if it is she would not go back to those happy, idly dreaming hours this spot recalls could they bestow all the happiness they promised then, and denied her. So often in our maturer experience we see the wisdom of God in withholding gifts we craved, whose attainment could but disappoint expectation and anticipation. Bruce Conway would make Lulu, with her loving capacity of twisting love's garlands over wanting capabilities, a very happy wife--he never could have quite filled up the illimitable depths of Grace's heart, nor crowned her life with the fullness of content. "Will you go to see our flowers?" he asks, bending to Lulu with one of his rarely sweet smiles. "You favor my aunt so seldom in this way that I must needs do the honors in as great perfection as is possible to me--one never expects any great quota of perfection from my indolence, you know." She smiles as she dons again the broad straw hat that, by Mrs. Conway's request, she has laid aside, and rises to go. He rises, too--oh, how peerless in her eyes, in his suit of cool white linen, and his graceful indolence. "I am going to rifle your flower-garden of its sweets, Mrs. Conway," she says, lightly, as she follows him out on the broad piazza, down the steps, and into that exquisite garden that lay budding and glowing in the burning August sunshine. "Ah, life is sweet when life is young, And life and love are both so long!" CHAPTER XVII. "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE." Ah, me! what matter? The world goes round. And bliss and bale are but outside things; I never can lose what in him I found, Though love be sorrow with half-grown wings; And if love flies when we are young, Why life is still not long--not long. --MISS MULOCH. "It has been almost a month since I saw you," Conway says, drawing the small hand of Lulu within his arm as they saunter down a shady path where the crape myrtle boughs meet over their heads, showering pink blossoms in prodigal sweetness beneath their feet. No answer. She is looking ahead at a little bird hopping timidly about the path, and only turns to him when he goes on pathetically: "I have missed you so much." "You know where I lived," she answers, dryly. An amused smile outlines itself around the corners of his handsome mouth. "So you think it is solely my own fault that I have missed you--have not seen you. Well, perhaps it is--yet----" "Yet what?" "Oh, nothing--it does not matter." "No, I suppose not," she responds, a little scornfully. "Nothing seems to matter much to you, Mr. Conway. I believe you have found the fabled Lotos. It would suit you, and such as you, "In the hollow Lotos land to live and lie reclined On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."