Submitting at length, and abandoning the
grave, he flung himself down in the black shade of the pear trees, his
chin in his hands, and resigned himself finally and definitely to the
inrush of recollection and the exquisite grief of an infinite regret.

To his fancy, she came to him again. He put himself back many years. He
remembered the warm nights of July and August, profoundly still, the
sky encrusted with stars, the little Mission garden exhaling the mingled
perfumes that all through the scorching day had been distilled under
the steady blaze of a summer's sun. He saw himself as another person,
arriving at this, their rendezvous. All day long she had been in
his mind. All day long he had looked forward to this quiet hour that
belonged to her. It was dark. He could see nothing, but, by and by,
he heard a step, a gentle rustle of the grass on the slope of the hill
pressed under an advancing foot. Then he saw the faint gleam of pallid
gold of her hair, a barely visible glow in the starlight, and heard the
murmur of her breath in the lapse of the over-passing breeze. And then,
in the midst of the gentle perfumes of the garden, the perfumes of the
magnolia flowers, of the mignonette borders, of the crumbling walls,
there expanded a new odour, or the faint mingling of many odours, the
smell of the roses that lingered in her hair, of the lilies that exhaled
from her neck, of the heliotrope that disengaged itself from her hands
and arms, and of the hyacinths with which her little feet were redolent,
And then, suddenly, it was herself--her eyes, heavy-lidded, violet blue,
full of the love of him; her sweet full lips speaking his name; her
hands clasping his hands, his shoulders, his neck--her whole dear body
giving itself into his embrace; her lips against his; her hands holding
his head, drawing his face down to hers.

Vanamee, as he remembered all this, flung out an arm with a cry of pain,
his eyes searching the gloom, all his mind in strenuous mutiny against
the triumph of Death. His glance shot swiftly out across the night,
unconsciously following the direction from which Angele used to come to
him.

"Come to me now," he exclaimed under his breath, tense and rigid with
the vast futile effort of his will. "Come to me now, now. Don't you hear
me, Angele? You must, you must come."

Suddenly Vanamee returned to himself with the abruptness of a blow.
His eyes opened. He half raised himself from the ground. Swiftly his
sca