“It was in a scene in a play at the Princess's Theatre,” he cried triumphantly. “Yes, 1 recollect it distinctly—something just like your masterpiece, only more slavishly Greek—the scene was laid in Rome, so they would be sure to have it correct.”
“What play was it?” Dorothy asked.
“Oh, now you're asking too much,” he replied. “Who could remember the name of a play after thirty or forty years? All that I remember is that it was a thoroughly bad play with a Temple like yours in it. It was the fading of the light that brought it within the tentacles of my memory.”
“So like a man—to blame the dusk,” said his wife.
“The twilight is the time for a garden—the summer twilight, like this,” said Mr. Heywood.
“The moonless midnight is the time for some gardens,” said Dorothy, who is fastidious in many matters, though she did marry me.
“The time for a garden was decided a long time ago,” said I—“as long ago as the third chapter of Genesis and the eighth verse: 'They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day.'”
“You say that with a last-word air—as much as to say 'what's good enough for God is good enough for me,'” laughed Friswell.
“I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day,” said Mrs. Friswell gently.
“There are some people who would fail to hear it at any time,” said I, pointedly referring to Friswell. He gave a laugh. “What are you guffawing at?” I cried with some asperity I trust.