woman of
his dream love. He went in, awkward and embarrassed, and bought it. When
he took it home he did not know where to put it. It was out of place
among the dim old engravings of bewigged portraits and conventional
landscapes on the walls of Golden Milestone. As he pondered the matter
in his garden that evening he had an inspiration. The sunset, flaming on
the windows of the west gable, kindled them into burning rose. Amid the
splendour he fancied Alice's fair face peeping archly down at him from
the room. The inspiration came then. It should be her room; he would fit
it up for her; and her picture should hang there.

He was all summer carrying out his plan. Nobody must know or suspect,
so he must go slowly and secretly. One by one the furnishings were
purchased and brought home under cover of darkness. He arranged them
with his own hands. He bought the books he thought she would like best
and wrote her name in them; he got the little feminine knick-knacks of
basket and thimble. Finally he saw in a store a pale blue tea-gown and
the satin slippers. He had always fancied her as dressed in blue. He
bought them and took them home to her room. Thereafter it was sacred to
her; he always knocked on its door before he entered; he kept it sweet
with fresh flowers; he sat there in the purple summer evenings and
talked aloud to her or read his favourite books to her. In his fancy she
sat opposite to him in her rocker, clad in the trailing blue gown, with
her head leaning on one slender hand, as white as a twilight star.

But Carlisle people knew nothing of this--would have thought him tinged
with mild lunacy if they had known. To them, he was just the shy, simple
farmer he appeared. They never knew or guessed at the real Jasper Dale.

One spring Alice Reade came to teach music in Carlisle. Her pupils
worshipped her, but the grown people thought she was rather too distant
and reserved. They had been used to merry, jolly girls who joined
eagerly in the social life of the place. Alice Reade held herself aloof
from it--not disdainfully, but as one to whom these things were of small
importance. She was very fond of books and solitary rambles; she was
not at all shy but she was as sensitive as a flower; and after a time
Carlisle people were content to let her live her own life and no longer
resented her unlikeness to themselves.

She boarded with the Armstrongs, who lived beyond Golden Milestone
around the hill of pines. Until t