Part 3 Summary

The next time Wallace saw the door he was seventeen and in the back of a hansom cab on his way to Oxford. He was hoping to win a scholarship and knew it was important that he not be late; he decided not to stop. He did win the scholarship and had been glad he had had the restraint not to stop and enter the garden.

He reminisces that in those times, the real world afforded more excitement and opportunity than he believed he could find in the garden. He had his career, and he did well in it. At this point, the narrator lets the reader know that Wallace is a cabinet minister. Only recently had he come to feel that his work and life had become repetitive; he began to long for the garden, telling himself that if he ever saw...