“Thank you,” said the voice.

There had been a great space cleared in our garden, and on the edge of this, in removing a stubborn gum-tree, the negroes had uncovered what they supposed to be the body of one murdered.  Upon our knees, with Schmetz helping us, we were trying to tear away the rotten coverings, and the dirt and mold.  And there, beautiful despite the stains disfiguring him, lay the boy Love.  The marble pedestal from which he had been removed lay near him.  On the base, decipherable, was the sculptor’s name, and on one side, in small letters, “Brought from Italy, 1803, by R.H.”

“Why, he is perfect!” cried Alicia, joyfully.  “Oh, who could have been so stupid and so cruel as to hide away something so lovely?  Poor dear little god, aren’t you glad to get out of that grave and come back to the sun?  Aren’t you grateful, little god, that Sophy and I came to Hynds House?”

And at that moment a tall, slim, dark-skinned young man walked up, hands behind his back, and stood there regarding us with eyes as clear and cool as mountain water when the sunlight is upon it and golden flecks come and go in its brown depths.  The exquisitely aquiline features, the small black mustache, an indescribably proud and high-bred ease and grace of manner and bearing, were oddly exotic and even more oddly fascinating.  His slenderness was as strong as a tempered sword-blade, his quietness was trained power in repose.  And the hair of his head was so black that a purplish shadow rested upon it, and so thick that one was minded of Absalom: 

     ... in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as
     Absalom for his beauty:  from the sole of his foot to the
     crown of his head there was no blemish in him.

And when he polled his head (for it was at every year’s end that he polled it:  because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:), he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king’s weight.

He was so vivid and so new to me that my whole being was breathless with the wonder of him.  I knew, of course, that he did not belong to my world at all.  King’s sons are for princesses, for those human birds of paradise that flash, beautiful and fortunate, in larger spheres than those prosaic paths trodden by a workaday woman named Smith.

“What have you found?” he asked, in a delightful voice.

Alicia looked up.  Her face was like the break of day for youngness and freshness, and a wisp of a bright curl misbehaved itself on her cheek, a flirtatious curl that knew exactly how to make the most of its opportunities.  The young man’s eyes approved of it.

“We have found Love!” cried Alicia, breathlessly.  “Sophy and I have found Love in our garden!  Isn’t it wonderful and impossible and exciting and delightful?  But it’s true!  And it just goes with this whole place!” cried Alicia, morning-eyed and May-faced.