This is what they did. The next day was soft as balm. To Hagar, sitting in the sun on the step of the west porch, came the sound of steps over the fallen leaves of what was called at Eglantine the Syringa Alley—sycamore boughs above and syringa bushes thickly planted and grown tall, making winding walls for a winding path. The red surged over Hagar, her eyes, dark-ringed, half-closed. Laydon, emerging from the alley, came straight toward her, over a space of gravel and wind-brought leaves. It was mid-morning, the place open and sunny, to be viewed from more windows than one, with the servants, moreover, going to and fro on their morning business, apt to pass this gable end. Aunt Dorinda, for instance, the old, turbaned cook, passed, but she saw nothing but one of the teachers stopping to say, "Merry Christmas!" to Miss Hagar. All the servants liked Miss Hagar.

What Laydon said was not "Merry Christmas!" but, "Hagar, Hagar! that was Love came to us last night! I have not slept. I have been like a madman all night! I did not know there was such a force in the world."

"I did not sleep either," answered Hagar. "I did not sleep at all."

"Every one can see us here. Let us walk toward the gate, through the alley."

She rose from the step and went with him. Well in the shelter of the syringa, hidden from the house, he stopped, and laid his hands lightly upon her shoulders, then, as she did not resist, drew her to him. They kissed, they clung together in a long embrace, they uttered love's immemorial words, smothering each with each, then they fell apart; and Hagar first buried her face in her hands, then, uncovering it, broke into tremulous laughter, laughter that had a sobbing note.

"What will they say at Gilead Balm—oh, what will they say at Gilead Balm?"

"Say!" answered Laydon. "They'll say that they wish your happiness! Hagar, how old are you?"

"I'm nearly eighteen."

"And old for your years. And I—I am twenty-eight, and young for my years." Laydon laughed, too. He was giddy with happiness. "Gilead Balm! What a strange name for a place—and you've lived there always—"

"Always."

They were moving now down the alley toward a gate that gave upon the highroad. Near by lay an open field seized upon, at Christmas, by a mob of small boys with squibs and torpedoes and cannon crackers. They had a bonfire, and the wood smoke drifted across, together with the odour of burning powder. The boys were shouting like Liliputian soldiery, and the squibs and giant crackers shook the air as with a continuous elfin bombardment. The nearest church was ringing its bells. Laydon and Hagar came to the gate—not the main but a lesser entrance to Eglantine. No one was in view; hand in hand they leaned against the wooden palings. Before them stretched the road, an old, country pike going on and on between cedar and locust and thorn until it dropped into the violet distance.

"I wish we were out upon it," said Hagar; "I wish we were out upon it, going on and on through the world, travelling like gipsies!"

"You look like a gipsy," he said. "Have you got gipsy blood in you?"

"No.... Yes. Just to go on and on. The open road—and a clear fire at night—and to see all things—"

"Hagar—Why did they call you Hagar?"

"I don't know. My mother named me."

"Hagar, we've got to think a little.... It took us so by surprise.... We had best, I think, just quietly say nothing to anybody for a while.... Don't you think so?"

"I had not thought about it, but I will," said Hagar. She gazed down the road, her brows knit. The Christmas cannonading went on, a continuous miniature tearing and shaking of the air, with a dwarf shouting and laughing, and small coalescing clouds of powder smoke. The road ran, a quiet, sunny streak, past this small bedlam, into the still distance. "I won't tell any one at Eglantine," she said at last, "until Mrs. LeGrand comes back. She will be back in a week. But I'll write to grandmother to-night."

Laydon measured the gate with his hand. "I had rather not tell my mother at once. She is very delicate and nervous, and perhaps she has grown a little selfish in her love for me. Besides, she had set her heart on—" He threw that matter aside, it being a young and attractive kinswoman with money. "I had rather not tell her just now. Then, as to Mrs. LeGrand.... Of course, I suppose, as I am a teacher here, and you are a pupil ... but there, too, had we not best delay a little? It will make a confusion—things will be said—my position will become an embarrassing one. And you, too, Hagar,—it won't be pleasant for you either. Isn't it better just to keep our own concerns to ourselves for a while? And your people up the river—why not not tell them until summer-time? Then, when you go home,—and when I have finished my engagement here, for I don't propose to come back to Eglantine next year,—then you can tell them, and so much better than you could write it! I could follow you to Gilead Balm—we could tell them together. Then we could discuss matters and our future intelligently—and that is impossible at the moment. Let us just quietly keep our happiness to ourselves for a while! Why should the world pry into it?" He seized her hands and pressed his face against them. "Let us be happy and silent."

She looked at him with her candid eyes. "No, we shouldn't be happy that way. I'll write to grandmother to-night."

They gazed at each other, the gate between them. The strong enchantment held, but a momentary perplexity crossed it, and the never long-laid dust of pain was stirred. "I am not asking anything wrong," said Laydon, a hurt note in his voice. "I only see certain embarrassments—difficulties that may arise. But, darling, darling! it shall be just as you please! 'I'd crowns resign to call you mine'—and so I reckon I can face mother and Mrs. LeGrand and Colonel Ashendyne!" A flush came into his cheek. "I've been so foolish, too, as to—as to pay a little attention to Miss Bedford. But she is too sensible a woman to think that I meant anything seriously—"

"Did you?"

"Not in the least," said Laydon truthfully. "A man gets lonely, and he craves affection and understanding, and he's in a muddle before he knows it. There isn't anything else there, and I never said a word of love to her. Darling, darling! I never loved any one until last night by the fire, and you looked up at me with those wonderful eyes, and I looked down, and our eyes met and held, and it was like a fine flame all over—and now I'm yours till death—and I'll run any gauntlet you tell me to run! If you write to your people to-night, so will I. I'll write to Colonel Ashendyne."

They left the gate and again pursued the syringa alley. The sound of the Christmas bombardment drifted away. When they reached the shadow of the great bushes, he kissed her again. All the air was blue and hazy and the church bells were ringing, ringing. "I haven't any money," said Laydon. "Mother has a very little, but I've never been able, somehow, to lay by. I'll begin now, though, and then, as I told you, I expect next year to have a much better situation. Dr. —— at —— thinks he may get me in there. It would be delightful—a real field at last, the best of surroundings and a tolerable salary. If I were fortunate there, we could marry very soon, darling, darling! But as it is—It is wretched that Eglantine pays so little, and that there is so little recognition here of ability—no career—no opportunity! But just you wait and see—you one bright spot here!"

Hagar gazed at the winding path, strewn with bronze leaves, and at the syringa bushes, later to be laden with fragrant bloom, and at the great white sycamore boughs against the pallid blue, and at the roof and chimneys of Eglantine, now apparent behind the fretwork of trees. The inner eye saw the house within, the three-years-familiar rooms, her "tower room"—and all the human life, the girls, the teachers, the servants. Bright drops came to her eyes. "I've been unhappy here, too, sometimes. But I couldn't stay three years in a place and not love something about it."

"That is because you are a woman," said the lover. "With a man it is different. If a place isn't right, it isn't right.—If I had but five thousand dollars! Then we might marry in a month's time. As it is, we'll have to wait and wait and wait—"

"I am going to work, too," said Hagar. "I am going to try somehow to make money."

He laughed. "You dear gipsy! You just keep your beautiful, large eyes, and those dusky warm waves of hair, and your long slim fingers, and the way you hold yourself, and let 'trying to earn money' go hang! That's my part. Too many women are trying to earn money, anyhow—competing with us.—You've got just to be your beautiful self, and keep on loving me." He drew a long breath. "Jove! I can see you now, in a parlour that's our own at ——, receiving guests—famous guests, maybe, after a while; people who will come distances to see me! For I don't mean to remain unknown. I know I've got ability."

Before they left the alley they settled that both should write that night to Gilead Balm. Laydon found the idea distasteful enough; older and more worldly-wise than the other, he knew that there would probably ensue a tempest, and he was constitutionally averse to tempests. He was well enough in family, but no great things; he had a good education, but so had others; he could give a good character—already he was running over in mind a list of clergymen, educators, prominent citizens, and Confederate veterans to whom he could refer Colonel Ashendyne. He had some doubt, however, as to whether comparative spotlessness of character would have with Colonel Ashendyne the predominant and overweening value that it should have. Money—he had no means; position—he had as yet an uncertain foothold in the world, and no powerful relatives to push him. Unbounded confidence he had in himself, but the point was to create that confidence in Hagar's people. Of course, they would say that she was too young, and that he had taken advantage. His skirts were clear there; both had truthfully been taken prisoners, fallen into an ambuscade of ancient instinct; there hadn't been the slightest premeditation. But how to convey that fact to the old Bourbon up the river? Laydon had once been introduced to Colonel Ashendyne upon one of the latter's rare visits to the neighbouring city and to Eglantine. He remembered stingingly the Colonel's calm and gentlemanly willingness immediately to forget the existence of a teacher of Belles-Lettres in a Young Ladies' School. The letter to Gilead Balm. He didn't want to write it, but he was going to—oh! he was going to.... Women were curiously selfish about some things.... Mrs. LeGrand, too; he thought that he would write about it to Mrs. LeGrand. He could imagine what she would say, and he didn't want to hear it. He was in love, and he was going to do the honourable thing, of course; he had no idea otherwise. But he certainly entertained the wish that Hagar could see how entirely honourable, as well as discreet, would be silence for a while.

Hagar never thought of it in terms of "honour." She had no adequate idea of his reluctance. It might be said that she knew already the arching of Mrs. LeGrand's brows and the lightning and thunder that might issue from Gilead Balm. Grandfather and grandmother, Aunt Serena and Uncle Bob looked upon her as nothing but a child. She wasn't a child; she was eighteen. She felt no need to vindicate herself, nor to apologize. She was moving through what was still almost pure bliss, moving with a dreamlike tolerance of difficulties. What did it matter, all those things? They were so little. The air was wine and velvet, colours were at once soft and clear, sound was golden. In the general transfiguration the man by her side appeared much like a demigod. Her wings were fairly caught and held by the honey. It was natural for her to act straightforwardly, and when she must propose that she act so still, it was simply a putting forward, an unveiling of the mass of her nature. She showed herself thus and so, and then went on in her happy dream. Had he been able to make her realize his great magnanimity in giving up his point of view to hers, perhaps she might have striven for magnanimity, too, and acquiesced in a temporary secrecy, perhaps not—on the whole, perhaps not. Had she deeply felt the secrecy to be necessary, had they paced the earth in another time and amid actual dangers, wild beasts could not have torn from her a relation of their case.

But Laydon thought that she was thinking in terms of "honour." Pure women were naturally up in arms at the suggestion of secrecy. Their delicate minds had at once a vision of deception, desertion, all kinds of horrors. He acknowledged that men had given them reason for the vision; they could not be blamed if they saw it even when an entirely honourable and devoted man was at their feet. He smiled at what he supposed Hagar thought; his warm sense of natural supremacy became rich and deep; he felt like an Eastern king unfolding a generous and noble nature to some suppliant who had reason to doubt those qualities in Eastern kings at large—he experienced a sumptuous, Oriental, Ahasuerus-and-Esther feeling. Poor little girl! If she had any absurd fear like that—He began to be eager to get to the letter to Colonel Ashendyne. He could see his own strong black handwriting on a large sheet of bond paper. My dear Colonel Ashendyne:—You will doubtless be surprised at the nature and contents of this letter, but I beg of you to—

The syringa alley ended, and the west wing of the house, beyond which stretched the offices, opened upon them. Zinia, the mulatto maid, and old Daniel, the gardener, watched them from a doorway. "My Lord!" said Zinia. "Dey's walkin' right far apart, but I knows a co'tin' air when I sees it! Miss Sarah better come back here!"

Daniel frowned. He had been born on the Eglantine place and the majesty and honour and glory of Eglantine were his. "Shet yo' mouf, gal! Don't no co'tin' occur at Eglantine. Hit's Christmas an' everybody looks good an' shinin' lak de angels. Dey two jes' been listenin' to de 'lumination an' talkin' jography an' Greek!"

As the two stepped upon the west porch, the door opened and Miss Bedford came out—Miss Bedford in a very pretty red hood and a Connemara cloak. Miss Bedford had a sharp look. "Where did you two find each other?" she asked; then, without waiting for an answer, "Hagar! Mrs. Lane has been looking for you. She wants you to help her do up parcels for her mission children. I've been tying up things until I am tired, and now I am going to walk down the avenue for a breath of air. Hurry in, dear; she needs you.—Oh, Mr. Laydon! there's a passage in 'The Ring and the Book' that I've been wanting to ask you to explain—"

Hagar went in and tied up parcels in coloured tissue paper. The day went by as in a dream. There was a Christmas dinner, with holly on the table, and little red candles, and in the afternoon she went with Mrs. Lane to a Christmas tree for poor children in the Sunday-School room of a neighbouring church. The tree blazed with an unearthly splendour, the star in the top seemed effulgent, the "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" and laughter of the circling children, fell into a rhythm like sweet, low, distant thunder.

That night she wrote both to her grandmother and her grandfather. When she had made an end of doing so, she kneeled upon the braided rug before the fire in her tower room, loosed her dark hair, shook it around her, and sat as in a tent, her arms clasping her knees, her head bowed upon them. "Carcassonne—Aigues-Mortes. Carcassonne—Aigues-Mortes. I can't send a letter to father, for I don't know where to address it. Mother—mother—mother! I can't send a letter to you either...."