to thickets
profound, with secrets in their recesses. In and out among these
unfamiliar growths walked Nan and her companion, their pathway crooking
in a maze of newer wonders on either hand. One star peered from the sky,
the faint wind of the afternoon had sunk to a hint of mingled and moving
odours.

Gilian took the girl's hand, and thus together they went deeper into the
garden among the flowers that perfumed the air till it seemed drugged
and heavy. They walked and walked in the maze of intersecting roads
whose pebbles grated to the foot, and, so magic the place, there seemed
no end to their journey.

Nan became alarmed. "I wish I had never come," said she. "I want home."
And the tears were very close upon her eyes.

"Yes, yes," said Gilian, leading her on through paths he had never seen
before. "We will get out in a moment. I know--I think I know, the road.
It is this way--no, it is this way--no, I am wrong."

But he did not cease to lead her through the garden. The long unending
rows of gay flowers stretching in the haze of evening, the parterres
spread in gaudy patches, the rich revelation of moss and grass between
the trees and shrubs were wholly new to him; they stirred to thrills of
wonder and delight.

"Isn't it fine, fine?" he asked her in a whisper lest the charm should
fly.

She answered with a sob he did not hear, so keen his thrall to the
enchantment. No sign of human habitation lay around except the gravelled
walks; the castle towers were hid, the boat-strewn sea was on their
left no more. Only the clumps of trees were there, the mossy grass, the
flowers whose beauty and plenteousness mocked the posie in the girl's
hands. They walked now silent, expectant every moment of the exit that
somehow baffled, and at last they came upon the noble lawn. It stretched
from their feet into a remote encroaching eve, no trees beyond visible,
no break in all its grey-green flatness edged on either hand by wood.
And now the sky had many stars.

Their gravelled path had ceased abruptly; before them the lawn spread
like a lake, and they were shy to venture on its surface.

"Let us go on; I must go home, I am far from home," said Nan, in a
trepidation, her flowers shed, her eyes moist with tears. And into
her voice had come a strain of dependence on the boy, an accent more
pleasing than any he had heard in her before.

"We must walk across there," he said, looking at the far-off vague edge;
but yet he made no