like last year's leaves. He had groped in shadows and had been conscious
only of a blind alley, with a dead wall, somewhere, near at hand. But
now, abruptly, the shadows had gone, the blind alley had changed into a
radiant avenue, the dead wall had parted like a curtain, and beyond was
a new horizon, gold-barred and blue, and landscapes of asphodels and
beckoning palms. He was as one who, overtaken by sleep on the banks of
the Styx, awakes in Arcadia.

His face was so eloquent with the bewitchments through which he roamed
that, for the first time that evening, Miss Raritan smiled. She raised a
finger warningly.

"Now, Tristrem, if you say anything ridiculous I will take it back."

But the warning was needless. Tristrem caught the finger, and kissed her
hand with old-fashioned grace.

"Viola," he said, at last, "I thank you. I do not know what I can do to
show how I appreciate this gift of gifts. But yet, if it is anything, if
it can bring any happiness to a girl to know that she fills a heart to
fulfilment itself, that she dwells in thought as the substance of
thought, that she animates each fibre of another's being, that she
enriches a life with living springs, and feels that it will be never
otherwise, then you will be happy, for so you will always be to me."

The speech, if pardonably incoherent, was not awkwardly made, and it was
delivered with a seriousness that befitted the occasion. In a tone as
serious as his own, she answered:

"I will be true to you, Tristrem." That was all. But she looked in his
face as she spoke.

They had been standing, but now they found seats near to each other.
Tristrem would not release her hand, and she let it lie unrebellious in
his own. And in this fashion they sat and mapped the chartless future.
Had Tristrem been allowed his way the marriage would have been an
immediate one. But to this, of course, Miss Raritan would not listen.

"Not before November," she said, with becoming decision.

"Why, that is five months off!"

"And months are short, and then----"

"But, Viola, think! Five months! It is a kalpa of time. And besides," he
added, with the cogent egotism of an accepted lover, "what shall I do
with myself in the meantime?"

"If you are good you may come to the Pier, and there we will talk
edelweiss and myosotis, as all engaged people do." She said this so
prettily that the sarcasm, if sarcasm there were, was lost.

To this programme Tristrem was obliged to subscr