Thereafter we drank our tea very happily and Lisa’s young lover, with his whole heart in his eager face, told us quite simply of his love for her and begged us to help him. And we all well-nigh laughed and cried together at the bright business of life.
When the shadows had quite fallen and the young lover was gone and Lisa had slipped away to her room to be alone, Pelleas and I sat long before the fire. Nichola’s rose, fading in my lace, gave out a fragrance to which some influence in the room was akin; and we both knew.
I said: “Pelleas, I have been remembering that morning long ago at Miss Deborah Ware’s—and our Fountain of Gardens. When we were twenty-something, like Lisa and Eric.”
“But so have I been thinking of that!” Pelleas cried. And we nodded, smiling, for we love to have that happen. Perhaps it makes us momentarily believe that we are each other, and no aid asked of science to bring it about. But now as I looked at him I momentarily believed something else as well.
“Pelleas,” I began, “I am not sure—are you sure? Has any one else really been here in the room, besides us? Were Lisa and Eric really here—or have we only been remembering?”
Pelleas was looking in the fire and he did not meet my eyes.
“Lisa looks uncommonly like you, you know,” he said.
“And that young Eric Chartres—O, indeed Pelleas, he is not unlike you as you looked the very night that you ‘spoke’ to father. Dear,” I said, “perhaps those two have not been here at all. Perhaps it was we ourselves.”
He looked at me swiftly; and “Pooh!” said he enigmatically; but Pelleas’ doubt of charming things is always like belief.
I dare say many would feel that what we suspect is manifestly impossible. Besides, we have never actually admitted that we do suspect. But we are old and we have seen much magic.