"Of what do you speak?" asked Chayne.
"My dreams," Sylvia answered, knowing that she was justified of them. "For I have come awake into the land of my dreams, and I know it at last to be a real land, even to the sound of running water."
For from the hollow at her feet the music of the mill stream rose to her ears through the still night, very clear and with a murmur of laughter. Sylvia looked down toward it. She saw it flashing like a riband of silver in the garden of the dark quiet house. There was no breath of wind in that garden, and all the great trees were still. She saw the intricate pattern of their boughs traced upon the lawn in black and silver.
"In that house I was born," she said softly, "to the noise of that stream. I am very glad to know that in that house, too, my great happiness has come to me."
Chayne leaned forward, and sitting side by side with Sylvia, gazed down upon it with rapture. Oh, wonderful house where Sylvia was born! How much the world owed to it!
"It was there!" he said with awe.
"Yes," replied Sylvia. She was not without a proper opinion of herself, and it seemed rather a wonderful house to her, too.
"Perhaps on some such night as this," he said, and at once took the words back. "No! You were born on a sunny morning of July and the blackbirds on the branches told the good news to the blackbirds on the lawn, and the stream took up the message and rippled it out to the ships upon the sea. There were no wrecks that day."
Sylvia turned to him, her face made tender by a smile, her dark eyes kind and bright.
"Hilary!" she whispered. "Oh, Hilary!"