Now, such a thing had never happened in the town. And as this seemed why it never happened, it seemed likely to go on never happening indefinitely. But loneliness and the longing to create and the conjecture about life have always been as potent as battles; and beauty and boredom and curiosity have had something to do with history as well.
"Just this once, then," said the lady, and the gate closed upon the two.
Here was a garden like Matthew's own, but indefinitely atmosphered other. It spoke strangely of a wonted presence, other than his own. In his own garden he fitted as if the space for him were niched in the air, and he went as a man accustomed will go without thinking. But here he moved free, making new niches. And whereas on his own walks and plots he looked with lack-lustre eye as a man looks on his own gas-jet or rain pipe, now Matthew looked on all that he saw as on strange flame and sweet waters. And it was not the shrubs and flowers which most delighted him, but it was rather on a garden bench the lady's hat and gloves and scissors.
"How pleasing!" said he, and stopped before them.
"Do you find them so?" asked the lady.
And when he told her about her beauty, which was more difficult to do than he had imagined and took a longer time, she said:—
"There can be no other man in the world who would speak as you speak."
On which he swore that there was no man who would not speak so, and likewise that no man could mean one-half what he himself meant. And he looked long at her house.
"In those rooms," he said, "you go about. I wish that I could go about there."
But that frightened her a little.