were the
sandals of the higher Life?

"No, I suppose not. Of course, there's a--but it wouldn't probably
interest you."

"Wouldn't it?" cried Harry Luttrell.

"Well, it's a maze. Millie Splay is rather proud of it. The hedges are
centuries old." She turned innocent eyes on Harry Luttrell. "I don't
know whether you are interested in old hedges."

It is to be feared that "minx" was the only right word for Joan
Whitworth on this afternoon. Harry Luttrell expressed an intense
enthusiasm for great box hedges.

"But they aren't box, they are yew," said Joan, stopping at once.

Harry Luttrell's enthusiasm for yew hedges, however, was even greater
and more engrossing than his enthusiasm for box ones. A pagoda perched
upon a bank overlooked the maze and a narrow steep path led down into it
between the hedges. Joan left it to her soldier to find the way. There
was a stone pedestal with a small lead figure perched upon the top of it
in the small clear space in the middle. But Harry Luttrell took a deal
of time in reaching it. If, however, their progress was slow, with many
false turnings and sudden stops against solid walls of hedge, it was not
so with their acquaintanceship; each turn in the path brought them on by
a new stage. They wandered in the dawn of the world.

"Suppose that I had never come to Rackham Park!" said Harry Luttrell,
suddenly turning at the end of a blind alley. "I almost didn't come. I
might have altogether missed knowing you."

The terrible thought smote them both. What risks people ran to be sure.
They might never have met. They might have never known what it was to
meet. They might have lived benighted, not knowing what lovely spirit
had passed them by. They looked at one another with despairing eyes.
Then a happy thought occurred to Joan.

"But, after all, you did come," she exclaimed.

Harry Luttrell drew a breath. He was relieved of a great oppression.

"Why, yes," he answered in wonderment. "So I did!"

They retraced their steps. As the sun drew towards its late setting, by
an innocent suggestion from Joan here, a little question there, Harry
Luttrell was manoeuvred towards the centre of the maze. Suddenly he
stopped with a finger on the lips. A voice reached to them from the
innermost recess--a voice which intoned, a voice which was oracular.

"What's that?" he asked in a whisper.

Joan shook her head.

"I haven't an idea."

As yet they could hear no words. Words were flung from wa