He saw her again that afternoon on her way home. She did not
pause by the garden but walked swiftly past. Thereafter, every
day for a week he watched unseen to see her pass his home. Once a
little child was with her, clinging to her hand. No child had
ever before had any part in the shy man's dream life. But that
night in the twilight the vision of the rocking-chair was a girl
in a blue print dress, with a little, golden-haired shape at her
knee--a shape that lisped and prattled and called her "mother;"
and both of them were his.

It was the next day that he failed for the first time to put
flowers in the west gable. Instead, he cut a loose handful of
daffodils and, looking furtively about him as if committing a
crime, he laid them across the footpath under the pine. She must
pass that way; her feet would crush them if she failed to see
them. Then he slipped back into his garden, half exultant, half
repentant. From a safe retreat he saw her pass by and stoop to
lift his flowers. Thereafter he put some in the same place every
day.

When Alice Reade saw the flowers she knew at once who had put them
there, and divined that they were for her. She lifted them
tenderly in much surprise and pleasure. She had heard all about
Jasper Dale and his shyness; but before she had heard about him
she had seen him in church and liked him. She thought his face
and his dark blue eyes beautiful; she even liked the long brown
hair that Carlisle people laughed at. That he was quite different
from other people she had understood at once, but she thought the
difference in his favour. Perhaps her sensitive nature divined