The gardener watched the land and felt the sea for long hours. He felt no regret at having forsaken one for the other. For the moment he prided himself on heartlessness, or rather on intactness of heart, for he had left none of it behind. He was proud of the fact that he loved no one in the world. He prided himself on his vices more than on his virtues. There seems something more unique in vice than in virtue.
The gardener had the convenient sort of memory that is fitted with water-tight doors. His mind conducted a process by which the past was not kept fresh and green, nor altogether left behind, but crystallised and packed away on shelves in a businesslike manner. He could label it and shut it away without emotion. He shut away England now, and rejoiced to do so. Poor grey silly England that I am so glad to leave and so glad to see again....
The gardener turned presently to look for his garden, and found—the girl Courtesy.
Her brilliant and magnetic hair.
Her broad face with the abrupt flush on the cheeks, that was an inartistic accompaniment to the red of her hair, and looked as if Nature had become colourblind at the moment of giving Courtesy her complexion.
She herself looked herself—simple yet sophisticated.
“To think of seeing you here,” she said. “Who would have thought it.”
The gardener was one of those who are never surprised without being thunderstruck. He was very thorough in habit, and drank every emotion to its dregs.
His manners fell in ruins about him. His hat remained upon his head. His words remained somewhere beneath his tongue.
“I got a sudden invitation from a cousin in Trinity Island,” explained Courtesy. “And Dad gave me my passage out as a birthday present. I gave the threepenny bit to a porter, so I hope you don’t want it back. Have you kept a halo for me in this Paradise?”