I found myself moving slowly across the lawn again towards the house. I
presently heard the wind mousing softly in the limes. The air was fresh
and cool. The first stars were out. I saw the laburnum drooping, as
though thick clusters of these very stars had drifted earthwards among
the branches; I saw the gleam of the lilac; across the dim tangle of the
early roses shone the familiar windows, cosy now with the glow of
lighted lamps. . . and I became suddenly, in a very intimate sense,
"aware" of the garden. The Presence that walked beside me moved abruptly
closer. This Presence and the garden seemed, as in some divine
mysterious way, inseparable.

There was a stirring of the dimmest and most primitive associations
possible. Memory plunged back among ancestral, even racial, shadows. I
recalled the sweet and tender legend of the beginnings of the world,
when something divine, it was whispered, was intimate with man, and
companioning his earliest innocence, walked with him in that happier
state those childlike poets called--a garden. That childhood of the
world seemed very near.

I found again the conditions of innocence and pristine wonder--of
simplicity. There was a garden in my heart, and some one walked with me
therein. For Life in its simplest form--of breathing leaves and growing
flowers, of trees and plants and shrubs--glowed all about me in the
darkness. The blades of grass, the blossoms hanging in the air, strong
stems and hidden roots, fulfilled themselves with patience upon every
side, brimming with beauty and stillness did not seek to advertise. And
of this simplest form of life--the vegetable kingdom--I became vividly
aware, prodigal, mysterious, yet purposive. The outer garden merged with
the inner, and the Presence walked in both of them. . . .