At last there came a day—­the most blessed of my life, when we told our love.  We had been together all the morning, but after dinner Mr. Carson was so unwell that Stella stopped in with him.  At supper we met again, and after supper, when she had put little Tota, to whom she had grown much attached, to bed, we went out, leaving Mr. Carson dozing on the couch.

The night was warm and lovely, and without speaking we walked up the garden to the orange grove and sat down upon a rock.  There was a little breeze which shook the petals of the orange blooms over us in showers, and bore their delicate fragrance far and wide.  Silence reigned around, broken only by the sound of the falling waterfalls that now died to a faint murmur, and now, as the wavering breeze turned, boomed loudly in our ears.  The moon was not yet visible, but already the dark clouds which floated through the sky above us—­for there had been rain—­showed a glow of silver, telling us that she shone brightly behind the peak.  Stella began to talk in her low, gentle voice, speaking to me of her life in the wilderness, how she had grown to love it, how her mind had gone on from idea to idea, and how she pictured the great rushing world that she had never seen as it was reflected to her from the books which she had read.  It was a curious vision of life that she had:  things were out of proportion to it; it was more like a dream than a reality—­a mirage than the actual face of things.  The idea of great cities, and especially of London, had a kind of fascination for her:  she could scarcely realize the rush, the roar and hurry, the hard crowds of men and women, strangers to each other, feverishly seeking for wealth and pleasure beneath a murky sky, and treading one another down in the fury of their competition.

“What is it all for?” she asked earnestly.  “What do they seek?  Having so few years to live, why do they waste them thus?”

I told her that in the majority of instances it was actual hard necessity that drove them on, but she could barely understand me.  Living as she had done, in the midst of the teeming plenty of a fruitful earth, she did not seem to be able to grasp the fact that there were millions who from day to day know not how to stay their hunger.

“I never want to go there,” she went on; “I should be bewildered and frightened to death.  It is not natural to live like that.  God put Adam and Eve in a garden, and that is how he meant their children to live—­in peace, and looking always on beautiful things.  This is my idea of perfect life.  I want no other.”

“I thought you once told me that you found it lonely,” I said.

“So I did,” she answered, innocently, “but that was before you came.  Now I am not lonely any more, and it is perfect—­perfect as the night.”

Just then the full moon rose above the elbow of the peak, and her rays stole far and wide down the misty valley, gleaming on the water, brooding on the plain, searching out the hidden places of the rocks, wrapping the fair form of nature as in a silver bridal veil through which her beauty shone mysteriously.