nclosed and
fragrant garden, in which if no flaming angel of desire kept the gate
for him, he had at least the promise of refreshment.

That old passion for Eunice Goodward, all his feelings for all the women
he had known, served to show him what Savilla had meant when she said he
"gave her so much room"--the renewed sense of the spaciousness of life.

It would be there for his wife at the completest, and if she had, as it
seemed, turned him out of the Wonderful House in order to live in it
herself, he at least kept the gates. And was not this the proper
business for a man? He recalled what the Princess had said to him so
long ago when he had first begun to think of himself as a bachelor. "It
takes a lot of dreaming to bring one like me to pass." Well, he had
dreamed and he had slain some dragons. Later there would be children
playing in the House, daughters perhaps ... Lovely Ladies. The world
would be a better place for them to walk about in because of all that he
had lost and been.

When he went into the garden he had half expected that the Princess
would speak to him; the place was full of hints of her, faint and
persuasive as the scent of the flowers in the dark, little riffles of
his pulse, flushed surfaces, the tingling of his palms which announced
her, but she did not speak. He said to himself that he was now a well
man and had seen the last of her. Never before had he felt so very
well.

He saw the light moving in the palace behind him as his wife moved to
complete some of her arrangements; he heard her then pacing along the
marble floor of the great hall which went quite through the middle of
it--she must be going to her room, and in a little while he would go in
to her--he heard the light tapping of her feet and then he saw her come,
the lit lamp in her hand.

She had on still the white dress in which she had been married, and over
it she had thrown the silver-woven scarf which had been one of his first
gifts to her, and as she came the light glittered on it; it drew from
the polished walls bright reflections in which, amid the gilded frames,
he saw the dim old pictures start and waver--and as he saw her coming
so, Peter threw away his cigar and gripped suddenly at the balustrade to
steady him where he stood, against what out of some far spring of his
youth rushed upon him, as he saw her come--as he had always seen her, as
he knew now he was to see her always--his wife and the Lovely Lady.

THE END