The sun was dazzling where they stood. People, too, were coming down the stairs behind them.
"Let us go somewhere where we can talk," said Hagar; "the gardens over there—have you time?"
"I'm here on a holiday. I came yesterday. I don't know a soul and I was lonely. I've all the time there is."
They crossed the street, passed under an arch of blossoming vines, and entered the Royal Victoria's garden—deserted, cool, and silent as when Hagar had quitted it earlier in the morning. Built high above the ground, about the vast trunk of a vast silk-cotton tree was a square, railed platform reached by a flight of steps. A bench ran around it; it was a cool and airy perch, chequered with shadows of leaf and twig and with a sight of the azure sea. The two mounted the steps, and moving around the trunk to a well-shaded angle, sat down. No one at all seemed near; for solitude it was much like a tree house which, shipwrecked, they might have built on a desert island.
"Life's the most curious thing!" said Gayde.
"Isn't it? 'Curiouser and curiouser!' said Alice. I was twelve years old that summer we shared the apple turnovers."
"We didn't share them. You gave me all.—I was nineteen."
"And then—how many years?—Nine, isn't it?—that night at that Socialist meeting, when you spoke—"
"What were you doing there? I asked about you—I got to know well many of the people who were there that night—but no one could identify you. And though I kept you in mind, and looked for you, too, I could never find you again."