"I am going to make you a cup of tea—then we can talk."
He watched her as she made it, her deft hands unadorned, except by the one quaint ring, the whiteness of her skin set on by her green gown, the whiteness of her soul symbolized by the lilies.
He leaned forward and spoke suddenly. "Mary Ballard," he said, "if I ever reach paradise, I shall pray that it may be like this, with the golden light and the fragrance, and you in the midst of it."
Earnestly over the lilies, she looked at him. "Then you believe in Paradise?"
"I should like to think that in some blessed future state I should come upon you in a garden of lilies."
"Perhaps you will." She was smiling, but her hand shook.
She felt shy, almost tongue-tied. She made him his tea, and gave him a cup; then she spoke of commonplaces, and the little kettle boiled and bubbled and sang as if there were no sorrow or sadness in the whole wide world.
She came at last timidly to the thing she had to say.
"I don't quite know how to begin about your letter. You see when I read it, it wasn't easy for me at first to think straight. I hadn't thought of you as having any such background to your life. Somehow the outlines I had filled in were—different. I am not quite sure what I had thought—only it had been nothing like—this."
"I know. You could not have been expected to imagine such a past."