IT was evening, and Joan and Gabriel walked together under the great cedar-trees in the garden where the slanting sun streaked the long lawns with gold. The slim cypresses glittered under the sombre spirelets of the yews. Above, the garden, with its dreamy tapestries wrought out of living color, stretched towards the old house whose casements gleamed towards the sea.

Under the hoary and massive trees Gabriel and Joan walked hand-in-hand. Beauty seemed with them, as though they had stepped into some dim legend-land, where romance breathed over rich meadows and through waving woods. An Arthurian tenderness lived in the hour; envy and strife seemed banished even from thought.

Joan, radiant as faith, leaned within the hollow of Gabriel’s arm.

“Then even dreams come true,” she said to him.

There was an ardent light in the man’s eyes, such a light as kindles in the eyes of a seer.

“Was I not once tempted,” he answered her, “to embrace the thing that men call pessimism. For I was wounded of my fellows and knew not where to look for help. And there seemed so much horror in the world that even I half learned to jeer with those who mocked at my ideals.”

“No true man is a mocker, Gabriel.”

“Ay, and those who sneer betray the emptiness of their own mean minds.”

For a while they stood in silence, looking out towards the west. There was calm joy in the woman’s face, the joy of a woman whose love had conquered.

“The wise man ignores the vain, self-seeking, jealous horde,” she said, “where the envious intellect has stifled honor. Give me life where hearts are warm, where dissolute sophistry is unknown.”

Gabriel smiled at her, a lover’s smile.

“And once I doubted whether happiness could be found,” he said, “but now—”

“But now?” she asked.
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