diant confusion
of their colour, and they were so lavish of blossom we could not pick
them fast enough. I think ours was the pioneer garden of the gold-born
city, and awakened many to the growth-giving magic of the long, long
day.

And it was the joy and pride of Berna's heart. I would sit on the porch
of a summer's evening when down the mighty Yukon a sunset of vast and
violent beauty flamed and languished, and I would watch her as she
worked among her flowers. I can see her flitting figure in a dress of
dainty white as she hovered over a beautiful blossom. I can hear her
calling me, her voice like the music of a flute, calling me to come and
see some triumph of her skill. I have a picture of her coming towards me
with her arms full of flowers, burying her face lovingly among the
velvet petals, and raising it again, the sweetest flower of all. How
radiantly outshone her eyes, and her face, delicate as a cameo, seemed
to have stolen the fairest tints of the lily and the rose.

Starry vines screened the porch, and everywhere were swinging baskets of
silver birch, brimming over with the delicate green of smilax or clouded
in an amethystine mist of lobelias. I can still see the little
sitting-room with its piano, its plenitude of cushions, its book-rack,
its Indian corner, its tasteful paper, its pictures, and always and
everywhere flowers, flowers. The air was heavy with the fragrance of
them. They glorified the crudest corner, and made our home like a nook
in fairyland.

I remember one night as I sat reading she came to me. Never did I see
her look so happy. She was almost childlike in her joy. She sat down by
my chair and looked up at me. Then she put her arms around me.

"Oh, I'm so happy," she said with a sigh.

"Are you, dearest?" I caressed the soft floss of her hair.

"Yes, I just wish we could live like this forever;" and she nestled up
to me ever so fondly.

Aye, she was happy, and I will always bless the memory of those days,
and thank God I was the means of bringing a little gladness into her
marred life. She was happy, and yet we were living in what society would
call sin. Conventionally we were not man and wife, yet never were man
and wife more devoted, more self-respecting. Never were man and wife
endowed with purer ideals, with a more exalted conception of the
sanctity of love. Yet there were many in the town not half so delicate,
so refined, so spiritual, who would have passed my little lady like a