“Not at all!” said Mrs. Alison.  “True friend or lover loves that sense of the unplumbed, of the infinite, in the cared-for one.  To do else would be to deny the unplumbed, the infinite, in himself, and so the matching, the equaling, the oneing of love!” She leaned forward in her chair; she regarded the small, fragrant garden where every sweet and olden flower seemed to bloom.  “Now let us leave Ian, and old, stanch, trusted, and trusting friendship.  It is part of oneness—­it will be cared for!” She turned her bright, calm gaze upon him.  “What other realm have you come into, Alexander?  It was plain the last time that you were here, but I did not speak of it—­it is plain to-day!” She laughed.  She had a silver, sweet, and merry laugh.  “My dear, there is a bloom and joy, a vivification about you that may be felt ten feet away!” She looked at him with affection and now seriously.  “I know, I think, the look of one who comes into spiritual treasures.  This is that and not that.  It is the wilderness of lovely flowers—­hardly quite the music of the spheres!  It is not the mountain height, but the waving, leafy, lower slopes—­and yet we pass on to the height by those slopes!  Are you in love, Alexander?”

“You guess so much!” he said.  “You have guessed that, too.  I do not care!  I am glad that the sun shines through me.”

“You must be happy in your love!  Who is she?”

“Elspeth Barrow, the granddaughter of Jarvis Barrow of White Farm....  You say that I must be happy in my love.  The Lord of Heaven knows that I am! and yet she is not yet sure that she loves me in her turn.  One might say that I had great uncertainty of bliss.  But I love so strongly that I have no strength of disbelief in me!”

“Elspeth Barrow!”

“My old friend—­the unworldliest, the better-worldliest soul I know—­do not you join in that hue and cry about world’s gear and position!  To be Barrow is as good as to be Jardine.  Elspeth is Elspeth.”

“Oh, I know why I made exclamation!  Just the old, dull earthy surprise!  Wait for me a moment, Alexander.”  She put her hands before her eyes, then, dropping them, sat with her gaze upon the great tree shot through with light from the clearing sky.  “I see her now.  At first I could not disentangle her and Gilian, for they were always together.  I have not seen them often—­just three or four times to remember, perhaps.  But in April I chanced for some reason to go to White Farm....  I see her now!  Yes, she has beauty, though it would not strike many with the edge of the sword....  Yes, I see—­about the mouth and the eyes and the set of the head.  It’s subtle—­it’s like some pictures I remember in Italy.  And intelligence is there.  Enchantment ... the more real, perhaps, for not being the most obvious....  So you are enchained, witched, held by the great sorceress!...  Elspeth is only one of her little names—­her great name is just love—­love between man and woman....  Oh yes, the whole of the sweetness is distilled into one honey-drop—­the whole giant thing is shortened into one image—­the whole heaven and earth slip silkenly into one banner, and you would die for it!  You see, my dear,” said Mrs. Alison, who had never married, “I loved one who died.  I know.”