cher.
It has escaped from the sea and the storms and winds, and I've got
away from London, its tiresome dinners and hot rooms and all the
stupid men who want to marry one."

I laughed and watched her face as it lay against me, and I saw her
eyes half-closed as she gazed dreaming into the sunshine.

Faint pink clouds sailed across the sky at intervals like downy
feathers blown before a breeze; the flycatcher continued its
chattering song to us, some bees hummed with a warm summer-like sound
over the wall.

An hour slipped by and seemed only like one golden moment. We heard a
bell jangle from the direction of the house, and when I looked at my
watch I saw it was time to dress for dinner.

When we retraced our steps the whole garden was bathed in rosy light
and the lilac stood out in it curiously and poured forth a wonderful,
heavy fragrance as we passed.

The voice of spring, that beautiful low whisper with its promise of
summer and cloudless days was in all the air. Had we been married
several years I do not think either Viola or I would have found Mrs.
Jevons's cooking good nor praised the dinner that night; the
attendance also might have been condemned. But as it was we were in
that magic mirage of first days together and everything seemed
perfect.

When it was over we sought the outside again and sat watching the now
paling rose of the sky being replaced by clear, tender green. A
passion and rapture of song, the last evening song of the birds, was
being poured out on the still dewy air all round us. One by one the
songsters grew tired and ceased as a pale star grew visible here and
there in the transparent sky, and complete silence fell on the garden.
Only a bat flitted across it silently now and then, and the white
night-moths came and played by us. I had my arm round her waist and I
drew her close to me and looked down upon her through the dusky
twilight.

"Let us go, too, dearest, it is quite late."

She looked up, the colour waving all over her face, and smiled back at
me, and we went in and upstairs.

When we reached our room, the window was wide open as we had left it
and the room seemed full of soft violet gloom, heavy with fragrance of
the lilac that shewed its pale mauve stars through the shadows.

It was so beautiful, the effect of the deep summer twilight, that I
told her not to light the candles.

"Shew yourself to me in this wonderful mysterious half-light, nothing
can be more beautiful."