“The fragrance of the gardens is lovelier than ever,” Vina went on, “and listen to the great trees whispering back to the sea!”

They walked along the shore, and stared across toward Spain, and talked long of Beth and Bedient....  And once Vina stretched out her arms oversea, and said: 

“Oh, I feel so strange and wonderful!”

Cairns started to speak, but forbore....

They met early in the morning, down upon the deserted water-front.  An hour of drifting brought them back to Lily Lane.  There was a virginal pallor in the sunlight, different from the ruddy summer of the Mainland, as the honey of April is paler and sweeter than the heartier essence of July flowerings.  The wind breathed of a hundred years ago, and the sublime patience of the women who hurried down Lily Lane (faded but mystic eyes that lost themselves oversea through thousand-day voyages), to welcome their knight-errants, bearing home the marrow of leviathans....

“The gardens are kept up,” Vina said, standing on the walk, before the Prince house.  “Perhaps the old sisters are still there, and we may get some flowers from them——­”

“I think, if you’ll let me walk ahead and talk with the gardener,” Cairns said, “we’ll be allowed to go in—­at least, for some flowers.”

She laughed at the audacity of a stranger in Nantucket, but bade him try.

“If you fail, it’s my turn,” she added.

Cairns seemed to have little trouble in negotiating with the gardener, and presently beckoned.

“I’ve done very well for a stranger,” he whispered.  “We’re to have the flowers.  More than that, we are to look through the house.  The sisters are away——­”

“David——­”

“But I told him who you were—­about your friends and relatives in Nan—­here....  I assure you, he believes we have never set foot out of New England.”

There was a sweet seasoning in the house; decades of flowers and winds, spare living, gentle voices and infallible cleanliness—­that perfumed texture which years of fineness alone can bring to a life or to a house.

“See, the table is set for two!” Vina whispered, “as if the sisters were to be back for dinner.  Everything is just as they left it.”

They moved about the front rooms, filled with trophies from the deep, a Nantucketer’s treasures—­bits of pottery from China, weavings from the Indies, lacquers from Japan—­over all, spicy reminders of far archipelagoes, and the clean fragrance of cedar.

On the mantel in the parlor stood a full-rigged ship, a whaling-ship, with her trying-house and small-boats—­a full ship, homeward bound....

The gardener had left them to their own ways.

“That’s because he knows your folks,” Cairns said softly.  “Shall we look upstairs?”

“Oh, do you think we’d better?”

“Don’t you want to?”

“Yes——­”

“It isn’t a liberty—­when we have the proper spirit.”