Gard entered the cemetery-gate and went along the shrub-bordered path.
"Every man is the dungeon of himself, but there is a key that unlocks mine."
He stepped from the path into the grass, and Helen's apron was full of a mess of brown, earthy roots. She started and cried out, and held up both hands to him, with the trowel in one of them.
"I don't like my life, Nellie. Won't you let me into yours?" And she dropped the trowel and said, "Oh—why, yes," in a tone that sounded like an after-climax, and Gard took apron, yellow head, and all into his arms, and scattered the roots beside Widow Bourn's placid grave and Simon's stone, on which was graven insistently, "Remember Me." A bluebird warbled and cooed to himself on the fence and paid no attention. The bold head of Windless Mountain glimmered in the sun, that swung low and near it. Presently the shadow of Windless would sweep over Hagar with noiseless rush, with silence, or the sleepy twittering of day-birds.
"It was a long way here, Nellie. I went nearly to the other end of everything to find the path."
"Do you really love me? How long?"
"Long before I knew it. Do you mean how long am I going to?"
"No, I don't. Look, Gard! These will be blue violets when they grow. They come from behind the church, and mother liked them. But you belong to me now, and you mustn't stay here. It's cold under the hemlocks. You must come out in the sun."
They went back along the path to the gate. Over the fence in his garden the minister was planting peas, arranging them according to some theory of fitness, perhaps allegorically, and humming a hymn out of tune. Knowing that a tune was a spiritual mystery which Providence did not permit him ever thoroughly to penetrate, he only sang when he thought himself alone, and in a subdued murmur. The weather-vane of the militant church pointed southwest at Windless Mountain, which meant always a benevolent opinion about the weather. The sun slipped behind the mountain, and the shadow of Windless flowed over Hagar; over Rachel standing at the lilac gate, waiting for Helen, and liking the impersonal peace of the hour; over Thaddeus stepping up the hill from the post-office, and formulating certain reflections on the use and abuse of accident in the practice of conversation; over Helen and Gard.
"You must learn all about Hagar, Gard. That's the minister. He always pats his peas on the head when he plants them. And that's Windless."