“Yes,” said Armour quietly, “a regret has been born even among ‘the deadly shadows.’”
“Will you not repeat to me some more of those things that you repeat so well?” asked Vivienne demurely.
Bareheaded and standing with his back against a tree, Armour murmured to her the praises of another fairy glen in far-distant Wales, a place peopled with shy winds,
“Whose fitful plumes waft dewy balm
From all the wildwood, and let fall
An incommunicable calm.”
Then dropping on his knees on the ground he said, “Give me your clasp knife, Joe.”
“Me no give you big knife,” said the superstitious Christmas; “me ’fraid for Miss Debbiline. Spirits killum if touch ghos’ flower,” and he retreated farther among the ferns.
Armour laughed as he bent his light head over the flower that he was about to wrest from its home among the “sweet wood’s golden glooms.”
“Do you think it will grow if we plant it in the greenhouse?” asked Vivienne, as she watched her lover carefully insinuating a sharp-pointed stone among the decayed leaves of many seasons.