BEYOND THE BOX-HEDGE
As he greeted her, his gaze plunged deep into hers. She had recoiled a step, startled, to recognize him almost instantly. He noted the shrinking and thought it due to a stabbing memory of that forest-horror. His first words were prosaic enough:
“I’m an unconscionable trespasser,” he said. “It must seem awfully prowly, but I didn’t realize I was on private property till I passed the hedge there.”
As her hand lay in his, a strange fancy stirred in him: in that wood-meeting she had seemed something witch-like, the wilful spirit of the passionate spring herself, mixed of her aerial essences and jungle wildernesses; in this scented dim-lit close she was grave-eyed, subdued, a paler pensive woman of under half-guessed sadnesses and haunting moods. With her answer, however, this gravity seemed to slip from her like a garment. She laughed lightly.
“I love to prowl myself. I think sometimes I like the night better than the day. I believe in one of my incarnations I must have been a panther.”
“Do you know,” he said, “I followed the scent of those roses? I smelled it at Damory Court.”
“It goes for miles when the air is heavy as it is to-night. How terrible it would be if roses were intoxicating like poppies! I get almost tipsy with the odor sometimes, like a cat with catnip.”
They both laughed. “I’m growing superstitious about flowers,” he said. “You know a rose figured in our first meeting. And in our last—”
She shrank momentarily. “The cape jessamines! I shall always think of that when I see them!”
“Ah, forgive me!” he begged. “But when I remember what you did—for me! Oh, I know! But for you, I must have died.”