So real had the mirage become, that Honora did not answer.  The desert and its journey fell away.  Could such a thing, after all, be possible?  Did fate deal twice to those whom she had made novices?  The mirage, indeed, suddenly became reality—­a mirage only because she had proclaimed it such.  She had beheld in it, as he spoke, a Grenoble which was paradise regained.  And why should paradise regained be a paradox?  Why paradise regained?  Paradise gained.  She had never known it, until he had flung wide the gates.  She had sought for it, and never found it until now, and her senses doubted it.  It was a paradise of love, to be sure; but one, too, of duty.  Duty made it real.  Work was there, and fulfilment of the purpose of life itself.  And if his days hitherto had been useless, hers had in truth been barren.

It was only of late, after a life-long groping, that she had discovered their barrenness.  The right to happiness!  Could she begin anew, and found it upon a rock?  And was he the rock?

The question startled her, and she drew away from him first her hand, and then she turned her body, staring at him with widened eyes.  He did not resist the movement; nor could he, being male, divine what was passing within her, though he watched her anxiously.  She had no thought of the first days,—­but afterwards.  For at such times it is the woman who scans the veil of the future.  How long would that beacon burn which flamed now in such prodigal waste?  Would not the very springs of it dry up?  She looked at him, and she saw the Viking.  But the Viking had fled from the world, and they—­they would be going into it.  Could love prevail against its dangers and pitfalls and—­duties?  Love was the word that rang out, as one calling through the garden, and her thoughts ran molten.  Let love overflow—­she gloried in the waste!  And let the lean years come,—­she defied them to-day.

“Oh, Hugh!” she faltered.

“My dearest!” he cried, and would have seized her in his arms again but for a look of supplication.  That he had in him this innate and unsuspected chivalry filled her with an exquisite sweetness.

“You will—­protect me?” she asked.

“With my life and with my honour,” he answered.  “Honora, there will be no happiness like ours.”

“I wish I knew,” she sighed:  and then, her look returning from the veil, rested on him with a tenderness that was inexpressible.  “I—­I don’t care, Hugh.  I trust you.”

The sun was setting.  Slowly they went back together through the paths of the tangled garden, which had doubtless seen many dramas, and the courses changed of many lives:  overgrown and outworn now, yet love was loth to leave it.  Honora paused on the lawn before the house, and looked back at him over her shoulder.

“How happy we could have been here, in those days,” she sighed.

“We will be happier there,” he said.