d to throw from him all the fears which had
oppressed him, he told his triumphant lie.

"I am going to marry Anne Warfield; she has promised to be eyes for me,
and light--the sun and the moon."

Richard's face grew gray. He spoke with difficulty. "She has promised?"

Then again Geoffrey lied, meaning indeed before the night had passed to
make his words come true. "She is going to marry me--and I am the
happiest man alive!"

The light went out of Richard's world. How blind he had been. He had
taken her smiles and blushes to himself when she had glowed with a
happiness which had nothing to do with him.

He steadied himself to speak. "You are a lucky fellow, Fox; you must let
me congratulate you."

"The world doesn't know," Geoffrey said, "not yet. But I had to tell it
to some one, and a doctor is a sort of secular father confessor."

Richard's laugh was without mirth. "If you mean that it's not to be told,
you may rely on my discretion."

"Of course. I told you she was to play Beatrice to my Dante, but she
shall be more than that."

It was a rather silent party which had tea on the porch of the Playhouse.
But Beulah and Eric were not aware of any lack in their guests. Eric had
been to Baltimore the day before, and Beulah wore her new ring. She
accepted Richard's congratulations shyly.

"I like my little new house," she said; "have you been over it?"

He said that he had not, and she took him. Eric went with them, and as
they stood in the door of an upper room, he put his arm quite frankly
about Beulah's shoulders as she explained their plans to Richard. "This
is to be in pink and the other one in white, and all the furniture is to
be pink and white."

She was as pink and white and pretty as the rooms she was planning, and
to see her standing there within the circle of her lover's arm was
heart-warming.

"You must get some roses from my mother, Beulah, for your little garden,"
the young doctor told her; "all pink and white like the rest of it."

He let them go down ahead of him, and so it happened that he stood for a
moment alone in a little upper porch at the back of the house which
overlooked the wood. The shadows were gathering in its dim aisles,
shutting out the daylight, shutting out the dreams which he had lost that
day in the fragrant depths.

When later he came with the rest of them to Bower's, the river was
stained with the sunset. Diogenes and the white duck breasted serenely
the crimson surfac