r!...
No, of course you are right! If there is anything that in honor he
cannot tell, or that I--with my pledges, such as they are, in another
urn--may not hear, we shall find silences. I pin my trust to there
being nothing, after all!"

"The old wreath withered, and a new one better woven and more
evergreen--"

"I do not know.... I said just now that Ian and I kept little from
each other. In an exceeding great measure that is true. But there are
huge lands in every nature where even the oldest, closest, sworn
friend does not walk. It must be so. Friendship is not falsified nor
betrayed by its being so."

"Not at all!" said Mrs. Alison. "True friend or lover loves that sense
of the unplumbed, of the infinite, in the cared-for one. To do else
would be to deny the unplumbed, the infinite, in himself, and so the
matching, the equaling, the _oneing_ of love!" She leaned forward in
her chair; she regarded the small, fragrant garden where every sweet
and olden flower seemed to bloom. "Now let us leave Ian, and old,
stanch, trusted, and trusting friendship. It is part of oneness--it
will be cared for!" She turned her bright, calm gaze upon him. "What
other realm have you come into, Alexander? It was plain the last time
that you were here, but I did not speak of it--it is plain to-day!"
She laughed. She had a silver, sweet, and merry laugh. "My dear, there
is a bloom and joy, a _vivification_ about you that may be felt ten
feet away!" She looked at him with affection and now seriously. "I
know, I think, the look of one who comes into spiritual treasures.
This is that and not that. It is the wilderness of lovely
flowers--hardly quite the music of the spheres! It is not the mountain
height, but the waving, leafy, lower slopes--and yet we pass on to the
height by those slopes! Are you in love, Alexander?"

"You guess so much!" he said. "You have guessed that, too. I do not
care! I am glad that the sun shines through me."

"You must be happy in your love! Who is she?"

"Elspeth Barrow, the granddaughter of Jarvis Barrow of White Farm....
You say that I must be happy in my love. The Lord of Heaven knows that
I am! and yet she is not yet sure that she loves me in her turn. One
might say that I had great uncertainty of bliss. But I love so
strongly that I have no strength of disbelief in me!"

"Elspeth Barrow!"

"My old friend--the unworldliest, the better-worldliest soul I
know--do not you join in that hue and cry about wo