She treated him with the easy informality of privileged intimacy. She
had accepted him as belonging, notwithstanding his damaging statements
as to his antecedents, and he walked by the side of his divinity without
a trace of awkwardness or nervousness. This world of Truth was indeed a
world of easy ways! . . . The garden was fragrant with perfumes; the
perfume of full-blown roses--great pink and yellow and white blossoms,
drooping in clusters from trees and bushes; of lavender from an ancient
bed; of stocks--pink and purple; of sweetbriar, growing in a hedge
beyond. They walked aimlessly about along the gravel paths and across
the deep greensward, and Burton knew no world, nor thought of any, save
the world of that garden. But the girl, when they reached the boundary,
leaned over the iron gate and her eyes were fixed northwards. It was
the old story--she sighed for life and he for beauty. The walls of her
prison-house were beautiful things, but not even the lichen and the moss
and the peaches which already hung amber and red behind the thick leaves
could ever make her wholly forget that they were, in a sense,
symbolical--the walls of her life.

"To live here," he murmured, "must be like living in Paradise!"

She sighed. There was a little wistful droop about her lips; her eyes
were still fixed northwards.

"I should like," he said, "to tell you a fairy story. It is about a
wife and a little boy."

"Whose wife?" she asked quickly.

"Mine," he replied.

There was a brief silence. A shadow had passed across her face. She
was very young and really very unsophisticated, and it may be that
already the idea had presented itself, however faintly, that his might
be the voice to call her into the promised land. Certain it is that
after that silence some glory seemed to have passed from the summer
evening.

"It is a fairy story and yet it is true," he went on, almost humbly.
"Somehow, no one will believe it. Will you try?"

"I will try," she promised.

Afterwards, he held the two beans in the palm of his hand and she turned
them over curiously.

"Tell me again what your wife is like?" she asked.

He told her the pitiless truth and then there was a long silence. As he
stood before her, a little breath of wind passed over the garden. He
came back from the world of sordid places to the land of enchantment.
There was certainly some spell upon him. He had found his way into a
garden which lay beyond the world. He was c