But Jack was not ready yet to talk about daddy, or the work, or anything that concerned Corklesville and its tunnel—­the transition had been too sudden and too startling.  To be fired from a gun loaded with care, hard work and anxiety—­hurled through hours of winter travel and landed at a dinner-table next some charming young woman, was an experience which had occurred to him more than once in the past two years.  But to be thrust still further into space until he reached an Elysium replete with whispering fountains, flowering vines and the perfume of countless blossoms—­the whole tucked away in a cosey arbor containing a seat for two—­and no more—­and this millions of miles away, so far as he could see, from the listening ear or watchful eye of mortal man or woman—­and with Ruth, too—­the tips of whose fingers were so many little shrines for devout kisses—­that was like having been transported into Paradise.

“Oh, please let me look around a little,” he begged at last.  “And this is why you love to come here?”

“Yes—­wouldn’t you?”

“I would not live anywhere else if I could—­and it has just the air of summer—­and it feels like a summer’s night, too—­as if the moon was coming up somewhere.”

Ruth’s delight equalled his own; she must show him the new tulips just sprouting, taking down a lantern so that he could see the better; and he must see how the jessamine was twisted in and out the criss-cross slats of the trellis, so that the flowers bloomed both outside and in; and the little gully in the flagging of the pavement through which ran the overflow of the tiny pond—­till the circuit of the garden was made and they were again seated on the dangerous bench, with a cushion tucked behind her beautiful shoulders.

They talked of the tunnel and when it would be finished; and of the village people and whom they liked and whom they didn’t—­and why—­and of Corinne, whose upturned little nose and superior, dominating airs Ruth thought were too funny for words; and of her recently announced engagement to Garry Minott, who had started for himself in business and already had a commission to build a church at Elm Crest—­known to all New Jersey as Corklesville until the real-estate agencies took possession of its uplands—­Jack being instrumental, with Mr. MacFarlane’s help, in securing him the order; and of the dinner to be given next week at Mrs. Brent Foster’s on Washington Square, to which they were both invited, thanks to Miss Felicia for Ruth’s invitation, and thanks to Peter for that of Jack, who, at Peter’s request, had accompanied him one afternoon to one of Mrs. Foster’s receptions, where he had made so favorable an impression that he was at once added to Mrs. Foster’s list of eligible young men—­the same being a scarce article.  They had discussed, I say, all these things and many more, in sentences, the Scribe devoutly hopes, much shorter than the one he has just written—­when in a casual—­oh, so casual a way—­merely as a matter of form—­Ruth asked him if he really must go back to Corklesville in the morning.