; and it is the truth. Only they
kept it hidden in their hearts until the time came. And though you and
I may never know why this lane is called Shelley's, to us both it will
always be the greenest lane in Sussex, because it leads to the special
secret I spoke of. At the end of it is an old gate, clambered with blue
periwinkle, and the gate opens into a garden in the midst of the
forest, a garden so gay and so scented, so full of butterflies and bees
and flower-borders and grass-plots with fruit-trees on them, that it
might be Eden grown tiny. The garden runs down a slope, and is divided
from a wild meadow by a brook crossed by a plank, fringed with young
hazel and alder and, at the right time, thick-set with primroses.
Behind the meadow, in a glimpse of the distance full of soft blue
shadows and pale yellow lights, lie the lovely sides of the Downs,
rounded and dimpled like human beings, dimpled like babies, rounded
like women. The flow of their lines is like the breathing of a sleeper;
you can almost see the tranquil heaving of a bosom. All about and
around the garden are the trees of the forest. Crouched in one of the
hollows is my cottage with the table in it. And the brook at the bottom
of the garden is the Murray River."

Gillian looked up from his shoulder. "I always meant to find that some
day," she said, "with some one to help me."

"I'll help you," said Martin.

"Do children play there now?"

"Children with names as lovely as Sylvia, who are even lovelier than
their names. They are the only spirits who haunt it. And at the source
of it is a mystery so beautiful that one day, when you and I have
discovered it together, we shall never come back again. But this will
be after long years of gladness, and a life kept always young, not only
by our children, but by the child which each will continually
rediscover in the other's heart."

"What is this you are telling me?" whispered Gillian, hiding her face
again.

"The Seventh Story."

"I'm glad it ends happily," said Gillian. "But somehow, all the time, I
thought it would."

"I rather thought so too," said Martin Pippin. "For what does furniture
matter as long as Sussex grows bedstraw for ladies to sleep on?"

And tuning his lute he sang her his very last song.

My Lady sha'n't lie between linen,
My Lady sha'n't lie upon down,
She shall not have blankets to cover her feet
Or a pillow put under her crown;
But my Lady shall lie on the sweetest o