“I think,” she said, considering the question, with small head tipped sideways, “that you had better sit on this bench because the paint is dry and besides I can talk to you here and dig up these seedling larkspurs at the same time.”

“Don’t you want me to do some weeding?”

“With pleasure when you are a little stronger—­”

“I’m all right now—­”

He stood looking seriously at the bare flower-bed along the wall where amber shoots of peonies were feathering out into palmate grace, and older larkspurs had pushed up into fringed mounds of green foliage.

She had knelt down on the bed’s edge, trowel in hand, pink sun-bonnet fallen back neglected; and with blade and gloved fingers she began transferring the irresponsible larkspur seedlings to the confines of their proper spheres, patting each frail little plant into place caressingly.

And he was thinking of her as he had last seen her—­on her knees at the edge of another bed, her hair fallen unheeded as her sun-bonnet hung now, and the small hands clasping, twisting, very busy with their agony—­as busy as her gloved fingers were now, restlessly in motion among the thickets of living green.

“Tell me,” she said, not looking back over her shoulder, “it must be heavenly to be out of doors again.”

“It is rather pleasant,” he assented.

“Did you—­they said you had dreadful visions.  Did you?”

He laughed.  “Some of them were absurd, Shiela; the most abominably grotesque creatures came swarming and crowding around the bed—­faces without bodies—­creatures that grew while I looked at them, swelling to gigantic proportions—­Oh, it was a merry carnival—­”

Neither spoke.  Her back was toward him as she knelt there very much occupied with her straying seedlings in the cool shade of the wall.

Jonquils in heavy golden patches stretched away into sun-flecked perspective broken by the cool silver-green of iris thickets and the white star-clusters of narcissus nodding under sprays of bleeding-heart.

The air was sweet with the scent of late apple-bloom and lilac—­and Hamil, brooding there on his bench in the sun, clasped his thin hands over his walking-stick and bent his head to the fragrant memories of Calypso’s own perfume—­the lilac-odour of China-berry in bloom, under the Southern stars.

He drew his breath sharply, raising his head—­because this sort of thing would not do to begin life with again.

“How is Louis?” he asked in a pleasantly deliberate voice.

The thing had to be said sooner or later.  They both knew that.  It was over now, with no sign of effort, nothing in his voice or manner to betray him.  Fortunately for him her face was turned away—­fortunately for her, too.

There was a few moments’ silence; the trowel, driven abruptly into the earth to the hilt, served as a prop for her clinched hand.

“I think—­Louis—­is very well,” she said.