he spoke with enthusiasm--"A silver dawn, and a patch of Blue
Devils like smoke against it--;" ... "A blood-red sunset, and a lot of
airmen streaming across--"

He painted pictures, so that Anne saw battles as if a great brush had
splashed them on an invisible canvas. There were just four at the
table--the two men, Anne, and her second cousin, Jeanette Ware, who
lived the year round in the Connecticut house, and was sixty and
slightly deaf, but who wore modern clothes and had a modern mind.

It was not yet dark, and the light of the candles in sconces and on the
table met the amethyst light that came through, the wide-flung lattice.
Anne's summer gown was something very thin in gray, and she wore an
Indian necklace of pierced silver beads. Christopher had sent it to her
as a wedding-present and she had always liked it.

When they rose from the table, Christopher said, "Now for the birches."

Somewhere in the distance the telephone rang, and a maid came in to say
that Dr. Dunbar was wanted. "Don't wait for me," he said, "I'll follow
you."

Jeanette Ware hated the night air, and took her book to the lamp on the
screened porch, and so it happened that Anne and Christopher came alone
to the grove where the white bodies of the birches shone like slender
nymphs through the dusk. A little wind shook their leaves.

"No wonder," said Christopher, looking down at Anne, "that you wanted
this--but tell me precisely why."

She tried to tell him, but found it difficult. "I seem to find something
here that I thought I had lost."

"What things?"

"Well--guardian angels--do you believe in them?" She spoke lightly, as
if it were not in the least serious, but he felt that it was serious.

"I believe in all beautiful things--"

"I used to think when I was a little girl that they were around me when
I was asleep--

'Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--
Bless the bed that I lie on--'"

her laugh was a bit breathless--"but I don't believe in them any more.
Ridgeley doesn't, you know. And it does seem silly--"

"Oh, no, it isn't--"

"Ridgeley feels that it is a bit morbid--and perhaps he is right. He
says that we must eat and drink and--be merry," she flung out her hands
with a little gesture of protest, "but he really isn't merry--"

"I see. He just eats and drinks?" He smiled at her.

"And works. And his work is--wonderful."

They sat down on a stone bench which had been hewn out of solid gray
rock. "I wish Ridgeley