limpse of you."

It seemed to her like a false note. She frowned.

"That," she insisted, "is ridiculous."

"Is it?" he murmured. "Don't you ever, when you walk in your gardens,
with only that low wall between you and the road, wonder whether any of
those who pass by may not carry away a little vision with them? It is a
beautiful setting, you know."

"The people who pass by are few," she answered. "We are too far off the
beaten track. Only on Saturdays and holiday times there are trippers,
fearful creatures who pick the bracken, walk arm in arm, and sing songs.
Tell me why you look as though you were dreaming, my preserver?"

"Look along the lane," he said softly. "Can't you see them--the
wagonette with the tired horse drawn up just on the common there--a
tired, dejected-looking horse, with a piece of bracken tied on to his
head to keep the flies off? There were three men, two women and a
little boy. They drank beer and ate sandwiches behind that gorse bush
there. They called one another by their Christian names, they shouted
loud personal jokes, one of the women sang. She wore a large hat with
dyed feathers. She had black, untidy-looking hair, and her face was
red. One of the men made a noise with his lips as an accompaniment.
There was the little boy, too--a pasty-faced little boy with a curl on
his forehead, who cried because he had eaten too much. One of the men
sat some distance apart from the others and stared at you--stared at you
for quite a long time."

"I remember it perfectly," she declared. "It was last Whit-Monday.
Hateful people they were, all of them. But how did you know? I saw
nobody else pass by."

"I was there," he whispered.

"And I never saw you!" she exclaimed in wonder. "I remember those Bank
Holiday people, though, how abominable they were."

"You saw me," he insisted gently. "I was the one who sat apart and
stared."

"Of course you are talking rubbish!" she asserted, uneasily.

He shook his head.

"I was behind the banks--the banks of cloud, you know," he went on, a
little wistfully. "I think that that was one of the few moments in my
life when I peered out of my prison-house. I must have known what was
coming. I must have remembered afterwards--for I came here."

She looked at him doubtfully. Her eyes were very blue and he looked
into them steadfastly. By degrees the lines at the sides of her mouth
began to quiver.

"Why, that person was abominable!" she declared. "He stared at