bought them and took them home to her room. Thereafter it was
sacred to her; he always knocked on its door before he entered; he
kept it sweet with fresh flowers; he sat there in the purple
summer evenings and talked aloud to her or read his favourite
books to her. In his fancy she sat opposite to him in her rocker,
clad in the trailing blue gown, with her head leaning on one
slender hand, as white as a twilight star.

But Carlisle people knew nothing of this--would have thought him
tinged with mild lunacy if they had known. To them, he was just
the shy, simple farmer he appeared. They never knew or guessed at
the real Jasper Dale.

One spring Alice Reade came to teach music in Carlisle. Her
pupils worshipped her, but the grown people thought she was rather
too distant and reserved. They had been used to merry, jolly
girls who joined eagerly in the social life of the place. Alice
Reade held herself aloof from it--not disdainfully, but as one to
whom these things were of small importance. She was very fond of
books and solitary rambles; she was not at all shy but she was as
sensitive as a flower; and after a time Carlisle people were
content to let her live her own life and no longer resented her
unlikeness to themselves.

She boarded with the Armstrongs, who lived beyond Golden Milestone
around the hill of pines. Until the snow disappeared she went out
to the main road by the long Armstrong lane; but when spring came
she was wont to take a shorter way, down the pine hill, across the
brook, past Jasper Dale's garden, and out through his lane. And
one day, as she went by, Jasper Dale was working in his garden.