you
told it to me last I did not understand."

They walked on through the intersecting paths whose maze had so
bewildered them before: "After all, it is not a bit like what it was,"
said she. "I thought it would take a wizard to get out of here, and now
I can see over the bushes and the sea is in sight all the time."

"Just so," he answered, "but you could see over no bushes in those days,
and more's the pity that you can see over them now, in the Duke's garden
as well as in life, for it's only one more dream spoiled, my dear Nan."

"Oh! there is not much blateness there! You are coming on, John
Hielan'man." But this was to herself.

"Then to you this is just the same as when we lost our way?"

"The same and not all the same," he admitted. "I can make it exactly the
same if I forgot to look at you, for that means sensations I never knew
then. I cannot forget the place has been here night and day, summer
and winter, rain and sun, since we last were in it, and time makes no
difference; it is the same place. But it is not the same in some other
way, some sad way I cannot explain."

The night was full of the fragrance of flowers and the foreign trees.
There was no breath of wind. They were shades in some garden of dream
compelled to stand and ponder for ever in an eternal night of numerous
beneficent stars. No sound manifested except the lady's breathing, that
to another than the dreamer would have told an old and wholesome Panic
story, for her bosom heaved, that breath was sweeter than the flowers.
And the dryads, no whit older as they swung among the trees, still all
childless, must have laughed at this revelation of an age of dream. Than
that sound of maiden interest, and the far-off murmur of the streams
that fell seaward from the woody hills, there was at first no other
rumour to the ear.

"Listen," said Gilian again, and he turned an anxious ear towards that
grey grassy sea. His hand grasped possessingly the lady's arm.

"Faith, and you are _not_ blate," said she whimsically, but indifferent
to remove herself from a grasp so innocent.

She listened. The far bounds of the lawn were lost in gloom, in its
midst stood up vague in the dusk a great druidic stone. And at last she
could distinguish faintly, far-away, as by some new sense, a murmur of
the twilight universe, the never-ending moan of this travailing nature.
A moment, then her senses lost it, and Gilian yet stood in his rapt
attention. She withdrew her