don't in the least
guess who you are! I have no doubt you write the most delightful stories
in the world--but never put me in one, please!"

He took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at her long before he
replied.

"Woman, dear," he said, "I have put you in a place--your own place--and
it is not in my novels!"

She scrambled to her feet laughing.

"It's very well to make stories, but it is really more diverting to live
them! Come, I must lead you now with your eyes shut tight to my
surprise!"

So hand in hand they went along a smooth green wood-road until she
stopped him.

"Look," she cried, "now look!"

Straight away till the road narrowed to a point of light against the sky
where the mountain dipped down, banks of mountain laurel rose on either
side in giant hedges of rose and white, while high above them waved the
elms and beeches of the forest.

"It is the gardening of the gods!"

"It is my own treasure-trove! I found it last year and I have been
waiting to bring you to it on my fete--what you call birthday! And now
wish me some beautiful thing--it may come true! There is a superstition
in my country--but I shall not tell you--unless the wish comes true!"

He broke off a spray of the waxen buds and crowned her solemnly where
she stood.

"I have already wished for you--the most beautiful thing in the world!"

She shook her head, sorrowful. "Man, dear, the only thing in all the
world I still want is the impossible!"

"Only the impossible is worth while--and I have wished!"

She shook her head again, laughing a little ruefully. "It could not
arrive--my impossible--and yet you almost tempt me to hope!"

"Anything--everything may arrive! You once thought that such a
friendship as this of ours could not, and lo, we have achieved it!"

"I wonder"--her eyes seemed fixed on some far prospect, a world beyond
the flowery way--"I wonder if we have! And I wonder why you have never
made a guess about my world when you have at least let me get a peep now
and then into yours?"

"I don't care a rap about your 'world,'" he smiled into her eyes, "while
I have you!"

"No curiosity about my--my profession?"

"Not a bit--though it was clear enough from the first that it was the
stage!"

She made an odd little outcry at his powers of divination.

"Then I must look it--before the footlights from my birth! Since you are
so clever, Mr. Man, will you also be merciful when you come to weigh me
in those scales y