come in? I
have finished the vines and presently I'm going to dig. Wait a
moment"--looking behind her and searching with one tentative foot for
the ladder--"I will have to let you in--"

A moment later she met him at the grille and flung it wide, holding out
her hand in welcome with a careless frankness not quite natural--nor was
the nervously vigorous handshake, nor the laughter, light as a breeze,
leaving her breathing fast and unevenly with the hue of excitement
deepening on lip and cheek.

So, the handshaking safely over, and chatting together in a tone louder
and more animated than usual, they walked down the moist gravel path
together--the extreme width of the path apart.

"I think," she said, considering the question, with small head tipped
sideways, "that you had better sit on this bench because the paint is
dry and besides I can talk to you here and dig up these seedling
larkspurs at the same time."

"Don't you want me to do some weeding?"

"With pleasure when you are a little stronger--"

"I'm all right now--"

He stood looking seriously at the bare flower-bed along the wall where
amber shoots of peonies were feathering out into palmate grace, and
older larkspurs had pushed up into fringed mounds of green foliage.

She had knelt down on the bed's edge, trowel in hand, pink sun-bonnet
fallen back neglected; and with blade and gloved fingers she began
transferring the irresponsible larkspur seedlings to the confines of
their proper spheres, patting each frail little plant into place
caressingly.

And he was thinking of her as he had last seen her--on her knees at the
edge of another bed, her hair fallen unheeded as her sun-bonnet hung
now, and the small hands clasping, twisting, very busy with their
agony--as busy as her gloved fingers were now, restlessly in motion
among the thickets of living green.

"Tell me," she said, not looking back over her shoulder, "it must be
heavenly to be out of doors again."

"It _is_ rather pleasant," he assented.

"Did you--they said you had dreadful visions. Did you?"

He laughed. "Some of them were absurd, Shiela; the most abominably
grotesque creatures came swarming and crowding around the bed--faces
without bodies--creatures that grew while I looked at them, swelling to
gigantic proportions--Oh, it was a merry carnival--"

Neither spoke. Her back was toward him as she knelt there very much
occupied with her straying seedlings in the cool shade of the wall.