, like a pause in worship. And anon she rose.

Monsieur Vignevielle's steps were bent toward the more central part of
the town, and he was presently passing along a high, close, board-fence,
on the right hand side of the way, when, just within this enclosure,
and almost overhead, in the dark boughs of a large orange-tree, a
mocking-bird began the first low flute-notes of his all-night song. It
may have been only the nearness of the songster that attracted the
passer's attention, but he paused and looked up.

And then he remarked something more,--that the air where he had stopped
was filled with the overpowering sweetness of the night-jasmine. He
looked around; it could only be inside the fence. There was a gate just
there. Would he push it, as his wont was? The grass was growing about it
in a thick turf, as though the entrance had not been used for years. An
iron staple clasped the cross-bar, and was driven deep into the
gate-post. But now an eye that had been in the blacksmithing
business--an eye which had later received high training as an eye for
fastenings--fell upon that staple, and saw at a glance that the wood had
shrunk from it, and it had sprung from its hold, though without falling
out. The strange habit asserted itself; he laid his large hand upon the
cross-bar; the turf at the base yielded, and the tall gate was drawn
partly open.

At that moment, as at the moment whenever he drew or pushed a door or
gate, or looked in at a window, he was thinking of one, the image of
whose face and form had never left his inner vision since the day it had
met him in his life's path and turned him face about from the way of
destruction.

The bird ceased. The cause of the interruption, standing within the
opening, saw before him, much obscured by its own numerous shadows, a
broad, ill-kept, many-flowered garden, among whose untrimmed rose-trees
and tangled vines, and often, also, in its old walks of pounded shell,
the coco-grass and crab-grass had spread riotously, and sturdy weeds
stood up in bloom. He stepped in and drew the gate to after him. There,
very near by, was the clump of jasmine, whose ravishing odor had tempted
him. It stood just beyond a brightly moonlit path, which turned from him
in a curve toward the residence, a little distance to the right, and
escaped the view at a point where it seemed more than likely a door of
the house might open upon it. While he still looked, there fell upon his
ear, from around