But the woman waved her back.  “I do not need you, Marie.  Here—­I will take the sunshade.  Now, go back.”  She moved on slowly.  The voices had died away.  In the distance, she saw Miss Stone, moving toward the wood, alone.  She paused for a moment, watching the grey figure—­a little cloud passed across her face.  She had not seen Miss Stone—­since... she did not blame her—­but she could not see her.  She moved on slowly, the light from the sunshade touching the lines in her face and flushing them softly.  Suddenly she stopped.  On a low couch, a little distance away, a boy lay asleep.  She came up to him softly and stood watching him.  There was something in the flushed face, in the childish, drooping lip and tossed hair—­that reminded her.  Slowly she sank down beside him, hardly breathing.

All about them, the summer went on—­the quiet, gentle warmth and the fresh scent of blossoms.  The boy murmured a little, and threw out an arm, and slept on.  The woman’s eyes watched the sleeping face.  Something mysterious was in it—­a look of other worlds.  It was the look of Betty—­at night... when she lay asleep.  It certainly was from some other world.  The woman bent forward a little.  The dark eyes opened—­and looked at her—­and smiled.  The boy sat up.  “I sleep,” he said.

He rubbed his eyes, boyishly, smiling still to her.  “I very sleepy,” he said.  “I work.”  He rubbed his arms.  “I work hard.”

She questioned him and moved a little away, and he came and sat at her feet, telling her of himself—­with quiet slowness.  As she questioned him he told her all that he knew.  And they chatted in the sunshine—­subtly drawn to each other—­happy in something they could not have said.

The boy had grown refined by his illness—­the sturdy hands that had guided the push-cart had lost their roughened look and seemed the shape of some old statue; and the head, poised on the round throat, was as if some old museum had come to life and laughed in the sun.  If Mrs. Philip Harris had seen Alcibiades shoving his cart before him, along the cobbled street, his head thrown back, his voice calling “Ban-an-nas!” as he went, she would not have given him a thought.  But here, in her garden, in the white clothes that he wore, and sitting at her feet, it was as if the gates to another world had opened to them—­and both looked back together at his own life.  The mystery in the boy’s eyes stirred her—­and the sound of his voice... there was something in it... beauty, wonder—­mystery.  She drew a quick breath.  “I think I will go in,” she said, and the boy lifted himself to help her—­and only left her, under the loggia, with a quick, grateful flash of the dark smile.

Mrs. Philip Harris slept that night—­the chloral, on the little table beside her, untouched.  And the next day found her in the garden.