Betty and Mount Dunstan left Mr. Penzance talking to the convalescent after a short time.  Mount Dunstan had asked to be shown the gardens.  He wanted to see the wonderful things he had heard had been already done to them.

They went down the stairs together and passed through the drawing-room into the pleasure grounds.  The once neglected lawns had already been mown and rolled, clipped and trimmed, until they spread before the eye huge measures of green velvet; even the beds girdling and adorning them were brilliant with flowers.

“Kedgers!” said Betty, waving her hand.  “In my ignorance I thought we must wait for blossoms until next year; but it appears that wonders can be brought all ready to bloom for one from nursery gardens, and can be made to grow with care—­and daring—­and passionate affection.  I have seen Kedgers turn pale with anguish as he hung over a bed of transplanted things which seemed to droop too long.  They droop just at first, you know, and then they slowly lift their heads, slowly, as if to listen to a Voice calling—­calling.  Once I sat for quite a long time before a rose, watching it.  When I saw it begin to listen, I felt a little trembling pass over my body.  I seemed to be so strangely near to such a strange thing.  It was Life—­Life coming back—­in answer to what we cannot hear.”

She had begun lightly, and then her voice had changed.  It was very quiet at the end of her speaking.  Mount Dunstan simply repeated her last words.

“To what we cannot hear.”

“One feels it so much in a garden,” she said.  “I have never lived in a garden of my own.  This is not mine, but I have been living in it—­with Kedgers.  One is so close to Life in it—­the stirring in the brown earth, the piercing through of green spears, that breaking of buds and pouring forth of scent!  Why shouldn’t one tremble, if one thinks?  I have stood in a potting shed and watched Kedgers fill a shallow box with damp rich mould and scatter over it a thin layer of infinitesimal seeds; then he moistens them and carries them reverently to his altars in a greenhouse.  The ledges in Kedgers’ green-houses are altars.  I think he offers prayers before them.  Why not?  I should.  And when one comes to see them, the moist seeds are swelled to fulness, and when one comes again they are bursting.  And the next time, tiny green things are curling outward.  And, at last, there is a fairy forest of tiniest pale green stems and leaves.  And one is standing close to the Secret of the World!  And why should not one prostrate one’s self, breathing softly—­and touching one’s awed forehead to the earth?”

Mount Dunstan turned and looked at her—­a pause in his step—­they were walking down a turfed path, and over their heads meeting branches of new leaves hung.  Something in his movement made her turn and pause also.  They both paused—­and quite unknowingly.

“Do you know,” he said, in a low and rather unusual voice, “that as we were on our way here, I said of you to Penzance, that you were Life—­you!”