mmer for the same reason that
had caused Valerie French to bend her young steps towards Hawthorne.
Each drew the other magnetically. It was not at all strange,
therefore, that they should have met. Neither, since the attraction
was mutual, is it surprising that the effect of each other's company
was exhilarating to a degree. Together, they were at the very top of
their bent. If the man trod upon air, the maid was glowing. His
lady's breath sweetened the smell of autumn; the brush of her lord's
jacket made the blood pelt through her veins. Grey eyes shone with the
light that blue eyes kindled. Each found the other's voice full of
rare melody--music to which their pulses danced in a fierce harmony.
The world was all glorious....

Here was no making of love, but something finer--nothing less, indeed,
than the jewel natural, uncut, unworked, unpolished, blazing out of a
twofold crown that sat, yoke-like, upon their heads for all to see.
Since, however, they met no one, the diadem was unobserved....

So Jack and Jill passed with full hearts by yellow lanes into the
red-gold woods, and presently along a bridle-path that curled
mysteriously into a great sunlit shoulder of forest, where the driven
leaves fussed over their footsteps, and the miniature roar of a toy
waterfall strove to make itself heard above the swish and crackle of
the carpet the trees had laid.

"I'll tell you one thing I've learned," said Lyveden.

"What?" said Valerie.

"That what you do doesn't matter half as much as who you do it with. I
found that out in the Army. The work didn't matter. The discomfort,
the food, didn't count--comparatively. It was the company you had to
keep that made the difference."

"'Better is a dinner of herbs,'" quoted Valerie.

"Exactly. And it's the same now. I don't say I'd pick out a footman's
job, but there's nothing the matter with the work. Everything depends
on the other servants. My first two places nearly broke my heart: with
the Alison crowd----"

He hesitated, and Valerie completed the sentence.

"Everything in the garden is lovely," she said slowly.

"Comparatively--yes. Of course, it's--it's only a back garden."

"Is it?"

Anthony nodded.

"Entered by the back door and approached by the back stairs. You can't
get away from it."

"I can," said Valerie. "Speak for yourself. It's you who can't--won't
get away from it. They say that in Russia there are noblemen sweeping
the streets.