Suddenly, as his quick feet carried him down one of the darkest rose alleys, he came upon Regina. She was asleep on a little bank, in the deep shade, almost invisible under the drooping boughs of a laburnum, that poured its golden treasure to the ground.
With a single step he was beside her, he had caught her into his arms. She awoke to find herself clasped to his breast, her face being covered with wild, fierce kisses.
"You are mine. You cannot and shall not belong to anyone else ...!"
The garden held them—that magic garden that waved and bloomed in quiet peace, far from the riot of the hard and noisy world. Far more beautiful than any cathedral's were its green and shaded aisles; more beautiful than the anthem's roll its exquisite melody of rejoicing birds; more sweet its perfume than incense, and Nature breathed over her children there a greater blessing than man can ever give.
Three hours later Everest came back to the Rectory; he went straight up to his room, turned the key in his door, and threw himself face downwards on his bed.
He knew he ought to feel regret, to wish his action undone, to feel fear of future ill, but he could not; still less was any sense of reaction, of revolt, familiar to him in similar situations, near him now.
From head to foot, one great pulse of elation, satisfaction, joy and triumph beat through him. She was his, and those moments had been his—moments unequalled before in all his life of varied success with women. He recalled the scene with wondering ecstasy: the beauty of the garden, the transfigured face of the girl, the pure, unclouded rapture of those lustrous eyes, as she yielded to his arms, the radiant glory of all the air about them, its intoxicating, fragrant stillness. Was the garden really enchanted, as she called it. What was she, this girl? Was she a goddess who had descended to his embrace? In the proud joy of her self-surrender, in the ecstatic passion of her kiss, in the glamour of poetry and beauty she threw over every action which with other women was so commonplace, she seemed to be.
Of their act she had made a thing akin with beauty, with radiance, with light, and he could only feel glorified, as he saw she did.
Innocently, grandly, full of a fervent delight in him as she had in beauty, she had given herself to him, as Venus might have given herself to Anchises; he could think of no other simile.
And to the tender love he had felt invade his soul for her in those after moments which to some are so bitter, he could find no parallel in all his former existence.