all three. We were living with him
in the past. I think none of us saw the little stuffy room where we sat.
Only our bodies were there, like the empty, amber shells of locusts when
the locusts have freed themselves and vanished. I was in a rose arbour,
on a day of late June, in a garden by a canal that led to Belgium. The
Becketts were in their house across the sea.

"Why," his mother hesitated, "it was quite a story. But when he found
you again he must have told you it all."

"Ah, but do tell me what he told you!"

"Well, it began with a landlady in a hotel wanting him to see a picture.
The artist was away, but his sister was there. That was you, my dear."

"Yes, it was I. My poor Brian painted such beautiful things before----"

"We know they were beautiful, because we've seen the picture," Father
Beckett broke in. "But go on, Mother. We'll tell about the picture by
and by. She'll like to hear. But the rest first!"

The little old lady obeyed, and went on. "Jimmy said he was taken to a
room, and there stood the most wonderful girl he'd ever seen in his
life--his 'dream come alive.' That's how he described her. And there was
more. Father, I never told you this part. But maybe Miss--Miss----"

"Will you call me 'Mary'?" I asked.

"Maybe 'Mary' would like to hear. Of course I never forgot one word. No
mother could forget! And now I see he described you just right. When you
hear, you'll know it was love made his talk about you poetry-like. Jimmy
never talked that way to me of any one, before or since."

Padre, I am going to write down the things he said of me, because it is
exquisite to know that he thought them. He said, I had eyes "like
sapphires fallen among dark grasses." And my hair was so heavy and thick
that, if I pulled out the pins, it would fall around me "in a black
avalanche."

Ah, the joy and the pain of hearing these words like an echo of music I
had nearly missed! There's no language for what I felt. But you will
understand.

He had told his mother about our day together. He said, he kept falling
deeper in love every minute, and it was all he could do not to exclaim,
"Girl, I simply _must_ marry you!" He dared not say that lest I should
refuse, and there would be an end of everything. So he tried as hard as
he could to make me like him, and remember him till he should come back,
in two weeks. He thought that was the best way; and he would have let
his bet slide if he hadn't imagined that a little