as she walked beside him. It was a hot night, at June's very
highest tide, with the garden at the summit of its beauty. The Madonna
lilies were in bloom, showing ghostly white through the dark, rows and
ranks and armies of them all up and down the walks and borders,
sending sudden ripples of sweetness upward to the terrace whenever the
faint breeze stirred. There was no moon yet, but the stars were thick
overhead, and the moving lanterns of the fireflies glimmered among the
trees, low down still as they always are in the first hours of the
dark. Janet was thinking that when the world was so beautiful, it was
difficult to believe that things could go entirely wrong in it, but
she did not find it possible to put her idea into words. It may have
been that Cousin Jasper was thinking the same thing as he stopped and
stood for a long time at the head of the brick-paved stair leading
down from the end of the terrace into the garden. At last he began to
descend slowly, unable to make out the steps in the dark, so that he
put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. He spoke very
suddenly.

"It is not only in body but in spirit that the old must sometimes lean
upon the young," he said, and then, with his voice quite cheerful
again, began to talk of how well the flowers were doing this year.

Oliver had followed them to the top of the stair and stood above them,
listening, but not, apparently, to what Cousin Jasper was saying. His
head was bent and he was straining every nerve to hear some far-off
sound. His face looked troubled, then cleared suddenly as he came down
the steps.

"Cousin Jasper," he said, "didn't I tell you that the gardener wanted
you to know that the night-blooming cereus is open just now? Suppose
we walk out to the back of the garden and see it."

His cousin hesitated.

"It is rather late," he answered. "It will be open still to-morrow
night."

"Janet has never seen one," persisted Oliver, putting a firm arm
through Cousin Jasper's, "and it might rain or something to-morrow
night. She would be so disappointed and so would the gardener."

They went down the last steps together, into the sea of white lilies
and drifting fragrance, and disappeared into the darkness toward the
back of the garden.

In spite of his insistence, Oliver did not seem so deeply interested
as the others in the plant that was slowly opening its pink flowers
that have so brief and beautiful a season. The gardener, hastily
summ