“He is remaining permanently with Mr. Portlaw?”

“I think so.”

“I hope it will be agreeable for you—­both.”

“It is a very beautiful country.”  She rose to her slender, graceful height and surveyed her work:  “A pretty country, a pretty house and garden,” she said steadily.  “After all, you know, that is the main thing in this world.”

“What?”

“Why, an agreeable environment; isn’t it?”

She turned smilingly, walked to the bench and seated herself.

“Your environment promises to be a little lonely at times,” he ventured.

“Oh, yes.  But I rather like it, when it’s not over-populated.  There will be a great deal for me to do in my garden—­teaching young plants self-control.”

“Gardens freeze up, Shiela.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“But you’ll have good shooting—­”

“I will never again draw trigger on any living thing!”

“What?  The girl who—­”

“No girl, now—­a woman who can never again bring herself to inflict death.”

“Why?”

“I know better now.”

“You rather astonish me?” he said, pretending amusement.

She sat very still, thoughtful eyes roaming, then rested her chin on her hand, dropping one knee over the other to support her elbow.  And he saw the sensitive mouth droop a little, and the white lids drooping too until the lashes rested on the bloom of the curved cheek.  So he had seen her, often, silent, absent-minded, thoughts astray amid some blessed day-dream in that golden fable they had lived—­and died in.

She said, as though to herself:  “How can a woman slay?...  I think those who have ever been victims of pain never desire to inflict it again on any living thing.”

She looked up humbly, searching his face.

“You know it has become such a dreadful thing to me—­the responsibility for pain and death....  It is horrible for humanity to usurp such a power—­to dare interfere with life—­to mar it, end it!...  Children do not understand.  I was nothing more a few months ago.  To my intelligence the shallow arguments of those takers of life called sportsmen was sufficient.  I supposed that because almost all the little children of the wild were doomed to die by violence, sooner or later, that the quicker death I offered was pardonable on the score of mercy.” ...  She shook her head.  “Why death and pain exist, I do not know; He who deals them must know why.”

He said, surprised at her seriousness:  “Right or wrong, a matter of taste cannot be argued—­”

“A matter of taste!  Every fibre of me rebels at the thought of death—­of inflicting it on anything.  God knows how I could have done it when I had so much of happiness myself!” She swung around toward him: 

“Sooner or later what remains to say between us must be said, Garry.  I think the time is now—­here in my garden—­in the clear daylight of the young summer....  You have that last letter of my girlhood?”