“Do you name them?” asked Rand, poising a columbine upon the back of his hand.

“Of course,” answered Deb.  “All people have names.  That is Sapphira.”

Miranda advanced a flourishing zinnia.  “Dishyer Miss Keren-Happuch—­Marse Job’s daughter.”

Deb regarded with shining eyes a pale blue morning-glory with a little cap of white.  “This is Ruth—­I love her!  The dark one is Hagar—­she was dark, you know—­and those two are Rachel and Leah.”

“Ol’ Miss Babylon!” said Miranda succinctly, and put forth a many-petalled red lady.

     “Babylon, Babylon,
     Red an’ sinnin’ Babylon,
     Wash her han’s in Jordan flood,
     Still she’s sinnin’ Babylon!”

“And, these three?” asked Rand.

“Faith, Hope, and Charity,” answered Deb.  “Faith is blue, Hope is pink, and that white one is Charity.”

“She has a purple edge to her gown.”

“Yes,” said Deb, “and I am going to give her a crown, ’for the greatest of these is Charity!’ That yellow lily is the Shulamite.  Miranda and I are going now to gather more ladies.”  She looked at Rand with large child’s eyes.  “If you want somebody to talk to, my sister Jacqueline is reading over there in the summer-house.”

The blood rushed to Rand’s face.  His heart beat so loud and fast that it stifled a voice within him.  He did not even hear the voice.  He rose at once, turned, and took the path that Deb’s brown finger indicated.  Had he been another man, had he been, perhaps, Ludwell Cary, he might not have gone.  But he was Lewis Rand, the product and effect of causes inherited and self-planted, and his passion, rising suddenly, mastered him with a giant’s grip.  The only voice that he heard was the giant’s urgent cry, and he went without protest.

The summer-house was a small, latticed place, overgrown with the Seven Sisters rose, and set in a breast-high ring of box opening here and there to the garden paths.  A tulip tree towered above the gravel space before it, and two steps led to a floor chequered with light and shade, and to a rustic chair and table.  Jacqueline was not within the summer-house; she sat in the doorway, upon the step.  She was not reading.  She sat bowed together, her head upon her folded arms, a figure still and tragic as a sphinx or sibyl.  Rand’s eyes upon her roused her from her brooding.  She lifted her head, saw him, and her face, which had been drawn and weary, became like the face of the young dawn.

As Rand crossed the space between them, she rose.  He saw the colour and the light, and he uttered only her name—­“Jacqueline, Jacqueline!” A moment, and they were in each other’s arms.

It was their golden hour.  Neither thought of right or wrong, of the conditions of life beyond their ring of box, of wisdom or its contrary.  It was as though they had met in the great void of space, the marvel called man and the wonder that is woman, each drawn to each over the endless fields and through the immeasurable ages.  Each saw the other transfigured, and each wished for lover and companion the other shining one.