d--to _see_!"

There was a pause. He knelt there, busily sorting the bulbs. Suddenly
to the woman sitting on the garden bench the sun-bathed October gardens
seemed alive with the myriad questioning faces of the fall flowers;
wheels and disks like aureoled heads leaned toward her, mystical fire in
their eyes, the colored flames of their being blown by passionate desire
of revelation. "This is your moment," the flowers seemed to say to her.
"Ask him _now_."

But that she might not yet speak out her heart to John Berber his
mistress was sure. She was reminded of what Strang had so often said,
referring to their lonely quest--that actual existence was like a
forlorn shipwreck of some other life, a mere raft upon which, like grave
buffoons, the ragged survivors went on handing one another watersoaked
bread of faith, glassless binoculars of belief, oblivious of what
radiant coasts or awful headlands might lie beyond the enveloping mists.
Soon, the wistful woman knew, she would be making some casual
observations about the garden, the condition of the soil. Yet, if ever
the moment had come to question him who had once been "Gargoyle," that
moment was come now!

Berber lifted on high a mass of thickly welded bulbs clinging to a
single dahlia stalk. He met her gaze triumphantly.

"Michael says he planted only a few of this variety, the soft,
gold-hearted lavender. See what increase." The youth plunged supple
fingers into the balmy-scented loam, among the swelling tuber forms. "A
beautiful kind of ugliness," he mused. "I remember I used to think----"
The young gardener, as if he felt that the eyes fixed upon him were
grown suddenly too eager, broke abruptly off.

"Go on, John Berber. What you have to say is always interesting."

It was said calmly, with almost maternal encouragement, but the fingers
absorbed in the bright silks fumbled and erred. "Used to think"--words
such as these filtered like sunlight to the hope lying deep in Evelyn
Strang's heart.

But young Berber leaned upon his garden fork, looking past her. Over the
youth's face crept a curious expression of wrapt contemplation, of
super-occupation, whether induced by her words or not she could not
tell. Furtively Mrs. Strang studied him.... How soon would he drop that
mystical look and turn to her with the casual "educated" expression she
had come to know so well?

Suddenly, nervousness impelling her, she broke in upon his revery:

"How wonderful, with such d