"Sitting here alone, sometimes I seem to feel it all--all the capacity for
loving sacrifice and all the energy of human passion which wrought itself
into that beautiful offering of its devotion, and made it acceptable. But,
tell me, Evadne--are you very happy?"

"I am _too_ happy, I think, auntie. But I can't talk about it. I must
keep the consciousness of it close in my own heart, and guard it
jealously, lest I dissipate any atom of it by attempting to describe it."

"Do you think, then, that love is such a delicate thing that the slightest
exposure will destroy it?"

"I don't know what I think. But the feeling is so fresh now, auntie, I am
afraid to run the risk of uttering a word, or hearing one, that might
tarnish it."

She strolled out into the garden during the afternoon, and sat on a
high-backed chair in the shade of the old brick wall, with eyes half
closed and a smile hovering about her lips. The wall was curtained with
canaryensis, virginia creeper rich in autumn tints, ivy, and giant
nasturtiums. Great sunflowers grew up against it, and a row of single
dahlias of every possible hue crowded up close to the sunflowers. They
made a background to the girl's slender figure.

She sat there a long time, happily absorbed, and Mrs. Orton Beg's memory,
as she watched her, slipped back inevitably to her own love days, till
tears came of the inward supplication that Evadne's future might never
know the terrible blight which had fallen upon her own life.