Whereupon she went off to her easel before the north light, and Pelleas and I sat in the quiet room with our Wonderful Picture and talked of it.
“There must be such a place,” said Pelleas simply, “or he wouldn’t have painted it. He couldn’t, you know. There must be a place a little like it.”
“Yes, a little like it,” I assented, “with the fountain at the gate the way you said.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find it?” Pelleas went on. “To come upon it quite suddenly when we didn’t know. In Etruria, or Tuscany, or Tempe.”
Yes, it would be wonderful and before all things wonderful.
“We would know it at once,” he added. “We would have to know it, whatever way we came, by the well or by the path or by the shrine.”
Yes, we agreed, we would have to know it. What wonder to step together over that green with the rhythm and echo of the pipes to lure us to the way. If once we found it we would never leave it, we settled that, too. For this was the week of our betrothal, and it did not occur to us that one must seek more than gardens. So we talked, and in the mists of our happy fancy Pelleas suddenly set a reality that made our hearts beat more joyously than for their dreams.
“Think, dear,” he said, “this picture will hang in our home.”
It would—it would. We looked at it with new eyes. In our home.
Eventually Miss Deborah Ware came back, one hand in the pocket of her ticking apron.