moony dusk. And thanks to
you--who have helped me literally _to move into my dreams and live
there_--I don't seem to walk alone. For a few moments then, I am
neither lonely nor sad. The moonlight still drips into my heart, like
water into a fountain, as it dripped on that night I remember: and my
thoughts lead me along a beautiful, mysterious road that nobody else
can see--a road to wonderful things I've never known, but have always
longed for, such a road as certain music seems to open out before you."

The pressed leaves and petals in Barbara's letter were those of
pansies, rosemary, and rue: the dark blue pansies he had once thought
like her eyes at night; rosemary for the never-absent remembrance of
them; rue for an ever aching regret, because of what might have been
and could not be.

She asked him to tell her what he had done inside as well as outside of
the Mirador since he had taken it, and how he had furnished the rooms.
This was a difficult question to answer, because Denin had surrounded
himself with everything she had described in her old environment: white
dimity curtains, rag-woven rugs of pale, intermingled tints, the
"Mission" made chairs and tables, and copies of her old pictures on the
walls. If he detailed his chosen surroundings, would not the added
coincidence strike her as almost incredibly strange?

Denin ignored the request in his following letter, but Barbara repeated
it in her next. "After all, it isn't possible that she should suspect
the truth," he argued, and at last took what risk there was, rather
than appear secretive. Not that there _was_ a risk, he assured himself
over and over again; yet when a letter came which must be a reply to
his, the man's fingers trembled on the envelope. In a revealing flash
like lightning which shows a chasm to a traveler by night, he glimpsed
a hidden side of his own nature. He saw that it would be a
disappointment, not a relief to him, if Barbara passed over his
description of the new-born Mirador without stumbling on any vague
suspicion. He realized that he must have been hoping for her to guess
at the truth, and so break the thin crust of lava on that crater's
brink where they both stood, gathering flowers.

"Good God, I thought I had gained a little strength!" he said, and
opened the letter quickly, though with all accustomed tenderness of
touch. Then he tried to be glad, and remind himself that he had known
it would be so, when he read that she wonde