the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all went
on--there was no pause, no hush, no change--nothing to startle
her--only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to become a
single sound. All the sounds of earth and heaven, the homely, familiar
sounds of earth, but the choiring of the stars too, all the sounds of
the universe, at that moment, as the Angel knelt before her, drew
together into a single sound. And 'Hail,' it said, 'hail Mary full of
grace!'"

For a minute, after he had finished, Adrian stood still, and no one
spoke. Then he returned to the fireside, and sank back into his chair.

"What a beautiful--what a divinely beautiful--idea," Susanna said at
last, with feeling.

"Beautiful," emphatically chimed in Protestant Miss Sandus.

"Stand still, true poet that you are,--I know you, let me try and name
you," laughed Anthony, from the hearth-rug.

"Chrysostom--he should be named Chrysostom," said Miss Sandus.

"The world is a garden of beautiful ideas," was Adrian's modest
acceptance of these tributes. "One only has to cull them. But
now"--he rose--"I must toddle home. Are you going my way?" he inquired
of Anthony.

"What?" protested Miss Sandus. "You're leaving us, without telling the
experience of your life--the experience that you 'had to run' to tell
us!"

"And without singing us your song," protested Susanna.

Adrian wrung his hands.

"Oh, cruel ladies!" he complained. "How can you be so unjust? I have
told you the experience of my life. And as for singing my song--"

"He can always leave off singing when he hears a master talk," put in
Anthony.

"As for singing my song," said Adrian, ignoring him, "I must go home
and try to write it."

XV

And then the weather changed again. The clouds drifted away, the sun
came back, the sunshine was like gold that had been washed and
polished. The landscape smiled with a new radiance, gay as if it had
never gloomed. The grass was greener, the flowers were brighter, the
birds sang louder and clearer. The sea, with its shimmer and sheen,
was like blue silk; the sky was like blue velvet. The trees lifted up
their arms, greedy for the returned light and warmth, the sweeter air.

Susanna, at noon-day, in her pine grove, by her brookside, was bending
down, peering intently into the transparent water.

Anthony, seeking, found her there.

"Books in the running brooks. I interrupt your reading?" he suggested,
as