ife" . . . . . . . Frontispiece

Mary Grant . . . . . . . . FACING PAGE 22

"'I can't promise!' she exclaimed. 'I've never wanted to marry.'" . 286

"'It was Fate brought you--to give you to me. Do you regret it?'" . 398

I

THE GUESTS OF HERCULES

Long shadows of late afternoon lay straight and thin across the garden
path; shadows of beech trees that ranged themselves in an undeviating
line, like an inner wall within the convent wall of brick; and the
soaring trees were very old, as old perhaps as the convent itself, whose
stone had the same soft tints of faded red and brown as the autumn
leaves which sparsely jewelled the beeches' silver.

A tall girl in the habit of a novice walked the path alone, moving
slowly across the stripes of sunlight and shadow which inlaid the gravel
with equal bars of black and reddish gold. There was a smell of autumn
on the windless air, bitter yet sweet; the scent of dying leaves, and
fading flowers loth to perish, of rose-berries that had usurped the
place of roses, of chrysanthemums chilled by frost, of moist earth
deprived of sun, and of the green moss-like film overgrowing all the
trunks of the old beech trees. The novice was saying goodbye to the
convent garden, and the long straight path under the wall, where every
day for many years she had walked, spring and summer, autumn and winter;
days of rain, days of sun, days of boisterous wind, days of white
feathery snow--all the days through which she had passed, on her way
from childhood to womanhood. Best of all, she had loved the garden and
her favourite path in spring, when vague hopes like dreams stirred in
her blood, when it seemed that she could hear the whisper of the sap in
the veins of the trees, and the crisp stir of the buds as they unfolded.
She wished that she could have been going out of the garden in the
brightness and fragrance of spring. The young beauty of the world would
have been a good omen for the happiness of her new life. The sorrowful
incense of Nature in decay cast a spell of sadness over her, even of
fear, lest after all she were doing a wrong thing, making a mistake
which could never be amended.

The spirit of the past laid a hand upon her heart. Ghosts of sweet days
gone long ago beckoned her back to the land of vanished hours. The
garden was the garden of the past; for here, within the high walls
draped in flowering creepers and i