"I want to get out and walk to the house, Aunt Maria," she explained. "It will come back to me gradually then; I don't want to hurry or miss anything. Come with me, Morgan?" Talbot helped her out and in a few moments they stood alone in the road, the other carriages having passed on. "I love this place very, very dearly, Morgan," Natalia said, slipping her hand through his arm and walking slowly. "It is where my father and mother were very happy. It is where I was the most unhappy—and the happiest of little girls, and now—it is where my perfect happiness will come to me. I have felt all through my life that this old place would mean everything to me, one day—that all that was worth while would happen to me here. And it will," she ended, smiling up at him, "for we are to spend our honeymoon here."
Morgan Talbot looked before him intently, curious to see what manner of place it was that held his sweetheart's love so deeply. And as he looked through the dense shade of the trees to the wide open gate and beyond to the gleaming columns, he felt the charm of the old world surroundings creep over him. Turning finally towards Natalia and meeting her look, anxious for his approval, he saw with a sudden flash of insight, that the girl before him—intense, passionate, and oddly beautiful—was the culmination of the old house and all that had gone before.
"It is beautiful, Natalia," he said softly, drawing her closer to him. "It is more than you told me."
"And you will love it with me, Morgan?"
"I shall love it because it is a part of you."
They were directly before the iron gate now. Everything was very still in the glowing warmth of the sunshine. Natalia leaned against the gate, and drank in the view like a thirsty traveller. It spoke eloquently of the coming in and going out of the many who had gone before her, and of her own days, too; and as she gazed at it, little incidents of her childhood—long forgotten but safely stored away, came forward and made their bows and claimed her attention. The scene suddenly became peopled to her. Everything was significant. The depths of the magnolia grove were filled with mysterious ghosts of the past, and the red tiles of the roof, gleaming just above the dark line of the trees, called to her with the cry of familiar voices. The present slipped entirely from her under the rush of the pent-up memories crowding about on all sides.
"Shall we walk on now?"
The voice of her lover startled her. She looked up at him and smiled vaguely.
"Isn't it beautiful, Morgan? I wish you could see it as I do. Everything means so much to me that it can never mean for you. It makes me sad, dear, that you did not know it with me."
Talbot laughed down into her intense eyes. "It is happiness enough for me to know you now—why bother about what has gone before?"