She waited for him to come up to her.  He took his place upon the steps.  All around hung still and sunny space.  The basket of flowers between them was heaped with marigolds, pinks, and pansies.

“For Elspeth,” said Gilian.

“It is almost two years.  You have ceased to grieve?”

“Ah no!  But one learns how to marry grief and gladness.”

“Have you learned that?  That is a long lesson.  But some are quicker than others or had learned much beforehand....  Where is Elspeth?”

“Oh, she is safe, Glenfernie!”

“I wanted her body safe—­safe, warm, in my arms!”

“Spirit and spirit.  Meet spirit with spirit!”

“No!  I crave and hunger and am cold.  Unless I warm myself—­unless I warm myself—­with anger and hatred!”

“I wish it were not so!”

“I had a friend....  I warm myself now in the hunt of a foe—­in his look when he sees me!”

Gilian smote her hands together.  “So Elspeth would have loved that!  So the smothered God in you loves that!”

“It is the God in me that will punish him!”

“Is it—­is it, Glenfernie?”

He made a wide gesture of impatience.  “Cold—­languid—­pithless!  You, Robin, Strickland, Alison Touris—­”

Gilian looked at her basket of marigolds, pinks, and pansies.  “That word death....  I bring these here, but Elspeth is with me everywhere!  There is a riddle—­there is a strange, huge mistake.  She must solve it, she must make that port of all ports—­and you and I must make it....  It is a hard, heroic, long adventure!”

“I speak of the pine-tree in the blast, and such as you would give me pansies!  I speak of the eagle at the crag-top in the storm, and you offer butterflies!”

“Ah, then, go and kill her lover and the man who was your friend!”

Glenfernie rose from the step, in his face strong anger and denial.  He stood, seeking for words, looking down upon the seated woman and her flowers.  She met him with parted lips and a straight, fearless look.

“Will you take half the flowers, Glenfernie, and put them for Elspeth?”

“No.  I cannot go there now!”

“I thought you would not.  Now I am Elspeth.  I love her.  I would give her gladness—­serve her.  She says, ’Let him alone!  Do you not know that his own weird will bring him into dark countries and light countries, and where he is to go?  Is your own tree to be made thwart and misshapen, that his may be reminded that there is rightness of growth?  He is a tree—­he is not a stone, nor will he become a stone.  There is a law a little larger than your fretfulness that will take care of him!  I like Glenfernie better when he is not a busybody!’”

Alexander stared at her in anger.  “Differences where I thought to find likeness—­likenesses where I thought to find differences!  He deceived me, fooled me, played upon me as upon a pipe; took my own—­”