She would start for the garden the moment after luncheon, and walk with the books, that were never opened, clasped to her as usual, through the hot, silent noonday slowly towards the sea. She loved to reach the garden and be there before Everest, so that she might have time to think and dream there, of him alone. At this scorching hour there was such a deep silence in the thick green shades. The birds were quiet, taking their noontime rest after their ceaseless labours since the first grey light of dawn; the doves even sat puffed and voiceless in and about their cotes; her own light step on the sandy paths was the only sound. How lovely it was to go on, past the lilac bushes, of which the blossom was now over, but the leaves were still fair in their smooth, neat green, between the round and bunchy may-trees, most of them still laden with their pink and white snow and under the hanging veils of gold of the laburnum, until she reached the green turf beneath the palm, where the roses, so luxuriant in their June growth, no longer stood, as in the winter, like girls waiting for their partners, but joined hands with each other and danced merrily, nodding a thousand blooms as the light breath of summer passed over them. Here she would sit quietly, feeling her heart beating tumultuously at the thought that he was coming to find her there, that she would see the foliage part and the roses give way as the slim, beautiful figure came towards her, the green shade and gold light alternately falling on him. She was never quite sure that he would come. There was always that breathless uncertainty about it that is so painful and yet so delicious. Anything might occur at home that would make it impossible for him to insist on going out alone, and very often it did happen that he was kept and delayed at the last moment, and Regina waited and waited, trembling under the roses, her cheek flushing and paling, her bosom broken up by her heart-beats, until the intensity of longing and hoping and fearing became such that when he did appear she would fall into his arms in a passion of weeping from relief and delight.
But the moments before he came and before she began to fear that he would not come, while the hour was still early, and she sat there awaiting him in her pretty fresh dress, knowing that she was lovely as the flowers themselves in the tender light beneath the trees, were very dear to her. She lost herself in golden, glowing dreams of the future: she would be with him; they would wander together in those wonderful places where he loved to go; she would be beside him, and perhaps danger would come upon him and she would be able to protect him, save him; perhaps she would have the supreme privilege of dying for him. She would give up her life, oh, how gladly, in shielding him from pain or hurt; but what spoiled the happiness of this dream was the knowledge that Everest must suffer by her death, and yet that idea was delicious too, and she saw into his nature so well, she knew that he too would think nothing of his life if called upon to give it for her. Fortunately, dreams are not exacting, they do not make demands upon our logic. They lull us, soothe us and shut us in with rosy mists and lead us gently along soft, golden ways.
Sometimes all night she could not sleep for the joy of thinking of the morrow, and all the morning she could not read, nor paint, nor play for thinking of the afternoon and looking forward to the moment when she might take her way through the sleepy Rectory garden to the highroad and the sea.
Love is always wonderful, and to a woman always beautiful and entrancing, no matter what the guise in which it comes, or what the time or circumstances. If it comes to her late, when her face has lines in it which cause her agony lest her lover should perceive them, if her lover himself is a very imperfect specimen of humanity, that even her blinded eyes are offended by, even then love still gives her pleasure; but in Regina's case all of her love's setting and circumstance was as lovely as love itself and her joy was unclouded, exquisite, complete. Radiant in her eighteen years, she had no burden of deceit or cares or fears; she could lift her face to Everest and know there was nothing there, nor in her heart, that she dreaded him to find, and in his countenance bending over her there was that beauty, that perfection that gives rapture to the eyes as a melody does to the ears. Often returning from the garden, through the sweet-scented meadows in the long, light evenings, those calm evenings of the English summer which seem to carry madness to the blood of youth, after a long and happy afternoon spent with him, it seemed to her as if her head was light with joy, as if her brain or heart must burst with the excited happiness of loving and being loved by such a man as this.
In the soft violet dark that gathers under the limes, she would stand still, drinking in the fragrance of all the grasses rising from the cooling earth and listening to the triumphant laugh of the cuckoo when he found at last his mate in the thorn thicket beside her, and the call of the nightingale and all the hundred lesser voices of the wood, each summoning its mate, and would realise slowly in awed wonder that she too now was sharing in the great universal joy of the world. Sometimes also when she was with the others, and should have kept her mind free from all private thought, irresistibly the memory of some hour in the sheltered garden would come over her with such force that it absolutely shut her brain and senses to surrounding things. Once at the luncheon-table her father addressed her as she sat towards the other end and her ears were so sealed that she did not hear his voice, her eyes so fixed on the vision they saw that the figures round her, the wonder growing on all their faces as she sat immovable, like one suddenly deaf and blind, did not exist for her. It was only the sense of touch that remained true to its post, guarding the body, whence for the moment the mind, on Memory's wings, had fled. When her sister Violet tugged at her arm to rouse her she started, and came back to herself to find the whole table gazing upon her with various degrees of amusement and surprise. She flushed scarlet, to herself the blood seemed to get into her very eyes and burn.
"Father has spoken to you three times," remarked Violet, "you seem quite deaf." Regina apologised, beneath her drooping lashes over her burning cheeks her eyes took a glance at Everest opposite her. He was smiling too. He could well guess where her thoughts had been.
After that she tried hard never to think of all this wonderful inner life she was living, except when alone, but Love was sometimes insistent and far stronger than she, and she could not always shut the door of her thoughts upon him. So one day when she was obliged to go to the village on a mission for her mother, instead of to the garden, she lost her purse, and the eighteen shillings in it, and could never remember where it slipped from her hand, though she had never lost or forgotten it in her life before.
And to Everest, also, this time was very full of emotion, charged with an intensity of feeling that was new to him, although he kept his wits about him at luncheon and did not lose his purse. There were times for him, too, when he could think of nothing but Regina, when the image of the girl came before him with an insistence that would not be denied, and swept whatever he was doing aside and claimed him for its own. He longed to have her with him and for himself; he hated the long separations that now intervened often between their meetings, though they were in reality very good for him and helped to make the supreme delight of those moments in the garden.
The day of his departure came at length and his face grew pale and his heart beat painfully when he awoke at dawn and realised he had to leave her. It was arranged that the Rector and the two elder girls should drive him over to Stossop station in the landau, Regina being left out, as usual, of any general programme. She did not mind—their real good-byes had been exchanged yesterday under the whispering trees of the garden. An exceptionally lovely day, it was like the centre jewel on Summer's forehead in her diadem of wondrous days and nights. Warm and golden, without wind or cloud, it seemed to bless the lovers as they met in the deep hush of the sheltered spot and walked slowly, side by side, down the little narrow winding paths covered in by aloe and tamarisk and climbing giant rose towards the balustrade above the sea. How vital and life-giving was its warm salt breath as it met their faces, stealing up through the thickets, talking to them of its cool, seaweed-filled caves, of its still green pools teeming with infinite life; and at last they came in sight of it, calm and deeply purple, swaying and heaving gently as a maiden's bosom, under a rosy golden haze, softly, very softly, traced in delicate lilac against the evening sky lay the outlines of the hills across the bay; colour and light were jewel-like in their transparency. They approached the porphyry railing; but Regina could not look at the soft loveliness of the scene, she could only gaze up at him, so soon to be taken from her. Oh, the ache of that parting now it had come so near. She could have gone with him, claimed him openly, spared herself all pain. He had wished it, offered it. With a single word now she could be free from suffering, she could keep by his side. For a moment it seemed to her she must speak that word; but no, she held to her strength with both hands. Better to let him go free, better to prove to him the quality, the selflessness of her love, better to leave her fate in his hands. So she was silent, and only continued to gaze and gaze on the outline of his head, dark against the glowing sky. They leant there silent, each thinking of the first day when they had stood there, before their pact was made for meeting in solitude, before the influence of the garden had made them each other's and its own. But there was no bitterness, no regret in the thought of either. Their union had been full of magic beauty, of divine rapture, as if it had been in the Elysian fields, and they would not either of them have wished it in any way different.
When he drew her gently from the balustrade, and they turned inward again to the dark, close-roofed-in, leafy recesses of the garden, they were talking earnestly with beating hearts of the life that might spring from those dear glad hours there, and in a tiny glade, where the turf was like velvet and the great tamarisk-trees twisting and intertwining their thick branches overhead made a perfect roof, and the may-trees stood so thickly round that the nightingales were already singing there in the soft green dusk, he pressed her close to him and said one sentence that burnt into her brain and remained there as if stamped in with fire.