e surprise for me.

"I will say no more," he went on. "You will know the rest to-morrow; but
the best, not until evening."

I could think of nothing during dinner except what he had said, though
it was so late, and I'd been so hungry. And afterwards, standing on the
balcony outside my bedroom window looking down on a scene of fairy-like
beauty, the wonderful white moonlight and thoughts of the Prince seemed
to mingle together in my head, like some intoxicating draught. "Countess
Dalmar, Princess Dalmar-Kalm," I kept saying over to myself, until the
words wove themselves into a song in my brain, with the scent of the
flowers for accompaniment.

The whole house seems to have absorbed the perfumes of the garden, as if
they had soaked into the wood. The corridors, the bedrooms, the
wardrobes, even the chests of drawers, have the same delicate fragrance.
It scented my dreams and told me where we were when I waked in the
morning, confused with sleep.

XVI

A CHAPTER OF ENCHANTMENT

A birthday _must_ be happy spent in such an exquisite place, I told
myself, when I'd got up and peeped out of the window upon a land of
enchantment--even a birthday more advanced than one would choose. By
morning light the lake was no longer sapphire, but had taken on a
brilliant, opaque blue, like _lapis lazuli_. Umbrella pines were
stretched in dark, jagged lines on an azure background. Black cypresses
pointed warning fingers heavenward, rising tall and slim and solemn, out
of a pink cloud of almond blossoms. The mountains towering round the
lake, as if to protect its beauty with a kind of loving selfishness, had
their green or rugged brown sides softened with a purplish glow like the
bloom on a grape. And in the garden that flowed in waves of radiant
colour from terrace to terrace, as water flows over a weir, roses and
starry clematis, amethyst wistaria, rosy azalea, and a thousand lovely
things I'd never seen before, mingled tints as in a mosaic of jewels.

I had lain awake in the night listening to a bird which I could almost
have believed a fairy, and, though I'd never heard a nightingale, I
wondered if he could be one. He said over and over again, through the
white hours perfumed with roses and flooded with moonlight: "Do look, do
look! Spirit, spirit, spirit!" And so, just in case he might have been
calling me, I got up early to see what he had wanted me to see. Then I
was gladder than ever that we had decided to spend at le