in the world--was settling once more the intangible, indefinable
spell awakened by their first light contact. Through its silence
hurried their pulses; through its significance her dazed young eyes
looked out into a haze where nothing stirred except a phantom
heart, beating, beating the reveille. And the spell lay heavy on
them both.

"I shall bear your image always. You know it."

She seemed scarcely to have heard him.

"There is no reason in what I say. I know it. Yet--I am destined
never to forget you."

She made no sign.

"Ailsa Paige," he said mechanically.

And after a long while, slowly, she looked down at him where he sat
at her feet, his dark eyes fixed on space.




CHAPTER II

All the morning she had been busy in the Craig's backyard garden,
clipping, training, loosening the earth around lilac, honeysuckle,
and Rose of Sharon. The little German florist on the corner had
sent in two loads of richly fertilised soil and a barrel of forest