Even after Jane departed I did some hard thinking how I was to entertain so youthful a visitor as Zura.  Inside our simple home there was nothing especially beautiful, and my companion had never mentioned that she ever found me amusing.  Outside fore and aft there was a view which brought rapture to all beholders and peace to many troubled souls.  I was not sure how a wild young maid would thrive on views.

From the moment Zura entered the house and I caught sight of her face as she looked at my garden through the glassed-in end of the sitting-room, my fears disappeared like mist before a breeze.  A bit of her soul was in her eyes and, when she asked for a nearer view, I put down my work and led her through the carved gates into the ancient glory which was not only the garden of my house, but the garden of my soul.  We passed a moss-grown shrine where a quaint old image looked out across the lake rimmed with flaming azaleas, and on its waters a family of long-legged cranes consulted with each other.  Our way led over a bridge with a humped-up back and along a little path for one, then across a bank of ferns and into the tangle of bamboo all silvery with the sunshine.

At the beginning of our walk my guest’s conversation was of the many happy nothings I suppose most girls indulge in, but as we went farther she had less to say.  Her eyes grew wider and darker as the beauty of the place pressed in upon her.  We found a seat arched over with a blossoming vine and sat down for rest.

Zura was quiet and, finding she avoided every allusion to home, I drifted into telling her a bit of the garden’s history—­its unknown age, the real princes and princesses who in the long ago had trodden its crooked paths.  Legend said that so great was their love for it their spirits refused to abide in Nirvana and came to dwell in the depths of the dim old garden.  I told her the spot had been my play place, my haven of rest for thirty years, and how for want of company I had peopled it with lords and ladies of my fancy.  Armored knights and dark-haired dames of my imagination had lived and laughed and loved in the shadows of its soft beauty.  Anxious to entertain and pleased to have an audience, I opened wider the doors to my sentimental self than I really intended.  I went from story to story till the air was filled with the sweetness of romance and poetry.  In the midst of a wondrous love legend a noise, sudden but suppressed, stopped me short.  I looked at the girl.  She was shaking with laughter.

When I asked why, she managed to gasp, “Oh, but you’re an old softy!”

It was disrespectful, but it was also true and, though I felt as if a hot wind had been blowing on my face, there was such a note of comradeship in her voice that it cheered me to the point of joining in her merriment.  Our laugh seemed to sweep away many of the years that stood between us and the old thrill of anticipation passed through me.