A few days after this she grew tired one morning of working. At ten o'clock she put away paper and pencil, pen and ink, letters and manuscript, and went out, first into the garden, and then through the gate in the wall into the high white light of the street and the pale-coloured town. Few were abroad in this section; she gave a friendly nod to those she met, but they were not many—an old negress carrying chickens, a few slow wagons, a priest, a young girl and boy, white-clad, with tennis rackets; two or three others. The street swam in light, the blue vault above sprang intense, there was just enough air to keep away languor. She turned into the grounds of the old, closed Royal Victoria Hotel. Here was shade and greater freshness. She sat down on the rock coping of the driveway; then, as there was no one about, lay down upon it pillowing her head on her arms. Above her was a tall, tall tree, and between the branches the deep and vivid blue. It seemed so near, it was as though with a little upward effort you might touch a sapphire roof. Between the leaves the sun scattered gold sequins. They lay upon her white skirt, the hat she had discarded, her arms, her hair. She looked sideways watching a chameleon, burnished and slender, upon the wall below her. It saw her at last and with a jerk of its head scuttled away. Hagar laughed, sat up and stretched her arms. Some neighbouring, one-storey house, buried in foliage, possessed a parrot or cockatoo. She watched it now, on some hidden perch, a vivid splash of colour in the enfolding green, dancing about, chattering and screaming. Some curious, exotic fragrance came to her; she could not trace its source. "It's a morning for the gods!" she said, and walked slowly by winding paths downward through the garden to the street. Before her, seen through foliage, rose the curiously shaped building with a history where now was lodged the public library. She had visited it several times; she liked the place, which had a quaintness, and liked the way the air blew in through its deep windows; and where books were she was at home. She crossed the white street, entered and went up the stair past dusty casts, pieces of coral and sea-curios, and into the round room where English and American papers and magazines were spread upon a table. From this centre sprang, like short spokes, alcoves made by the book-stacks. Each of these divisions had its chair or two and its open window. The air came in coolly, deliciously. There were the librarian and two or three people standing or seated about the central table,—no one else in the cool, quiet place. Hagar, too, stood by the table for a while, turning over the January magazines, looking at the table of contents or glancing at some article or illustration. Catholicism versus Ultramontanism—Why Ireland is Disloyal—Drama of the Future—The Coal Strike and its Lessons—Labour and the Trusts—Labour and Capital—Municipalization of Public Services—The Battleship of the Future—The War against Disease—Tschaikowsky and Tolstoy—Mankind in the Making—Mendel's Law—The Advancement of Woman—The Woman who Toils—Variation in Man and Woman—Genesis of the Æsthetic Categories—New Metaphysical Movement—Inversion of Ideas as to the Structure of the Universe—The World and the Individual.—After a while she left these and the table and moved to one of the alcoves. It was not a day somehow for magazines. The rows of books! Her gaze lingered with fondness upon them—this familiar title, this loved old friend and that. Finally she drew forth a volume of Keats, and with it sat down in the sweet air from the window.

An hour passed. A man, who had come into the room a few minutes before, was standing, looking about him—evidently the first time he had been in the building.

The librarian joined him. "It's a pleasant old place, isn't it?" she said politely.

"It certainly is," answered the man. "But it's so curious with that narrow stair and these deep-set windows."

"Yes. You see it's the old jail. Once they kept men here instead of books."

There was a pause. Then the man said, "This is the nobler use, don't you think?"

"Oh," said the librarian; "but of course they were wicked men—that is, most of them. There wasn't anything else to do with them."

"I see," said the man. He looked about him. "Well, it's sweet and clean and useful now at last!"

Some one called the librarian and she went away. The man moved on with slow steps from alcove to alcove. Hagar, from her recess, watched him, fascinated. Her book had fallen upon the floor. With half of her mind she was again in a poor hall in New York on a winter night.... Five or six people entered the library together. They came between her and the man she was following with her eyes. When at last they moved from before her alcove, she saw him leaving the place. Before she could hastily rise and come out into the wider space he was out of the room upon the landing—he was going downstairs. She caught up the book from the floor, thrust it hurriedly into its place, and with a light and rapid step followed. He was at the foot of the stair when she reached the head.

"Oh," she called, "will you stop—will you wait?"

He stopped short, turned. She was halfway down the stair, which was not long. "I beg your pardon. Was it to me you were speaking?"

"Yes!" She came up with him—they stood together in the light-washed doorway. "I—You do not remember me." She put up her hand and took off her wide hat of straw and lace. "Do you, now?"

He gazed. "No—Yes! Wait.... Oh—h! You are the little girl again!"

They both laughed with pure pleasure. A soft, bright swirl of feeling enfolded the ancient doorway.

"Oh," she said, "I have so often thought of you!"

"Not oftener than I have thought of you.... You've always been like a quaint, bright picture and a piece of music in my mind.—I don't know your name."

"Hagar Ashendyne.—And I don't know yours."

"Denny Gayde.... I tried to find you in the crowd that night—the night of the meeting, you remember—but you were gone."

"Yes. And for weeks after that night I used to think that perhaps I might meet you on the street any day. And then I went away."

The sun was dazzling where they stood. People, too, were coming down the stairs behind them.

"Let us go somewhere where we can talk," said Hagar; "the gardens over there—have you time?"

"I'm here on a holiday. I came yesterday. I don't know a soul and I was lonely. I've all the time there is."

They crossed the street, passed under an arch of blossoming vines, and entered the Royal Victoria's garden—deserted, cool, and silent as when Hagar had quitted it earlier in the morning. Built high above the ground, about the vast trunk of a vast silk-cotton tree was a square, railed platform reached by a flight of steps. A bench ran around it; it was a cool and airy perch, chequered with shadows of leaf and twig and with a sight of the azure sea. The two mounted the steps, and moving around the trunk to a well-shaded angle, sat down. No one at all seemed near; for solitude it was much like a tree house which, shipwrecked, they might have built on a desert island.

"Life's the most curious thing!" said Gayde.

"Isn't it? 'Curiouser and curiouser!' said Alice. I was twelve years old that summer we shared the apple turnovers."

"We didn't share them. You gave me all.—I was nineteen."

"And then—how many years?—Nine, isn't it?—that night at that Socialist meeting, when you spoke—"

"What were you doing there? I asked about you—I got to know well many of the people who were there that night—but no one could identify you. And though I kept you in mind, and looked for you, too, I could never find you again."

"I was spending the winter in New York. That night we had missed the theatre. We walked down Fourth Avenue and across—we were seeing New York at night. A crowd was going into that hall, and we went in too—"

"I see."

"Not until I got home that night did I remember that I did not know your name.... And in a month I was upon the ocean, and I have been in America very little in all the years since. I am here this winter with my father.... And you?"

She regarded him with dark eyes, simple and serious and interested as the eyes with which as a child she had regarded him above her flower dolls. He was not hungry and haggard and fear-ridden as then, nor was he as he had been the night of the Socialist meeting, somewhat embarrassed and stumbling, strong, but piteous, too.... He was a little thin and worn, and looked as though he had been ill, she noted, but he was quiet, at ease, and assured. There needed no elaborate process in telling her things; to intuition she added a considerable knowledge of the world and of ways and means; to heart, intellect. One could do much in nine years; she knew that from personal experience. This man had added to native strength education, experience, poise, and significance. She might have said culture, only she had grown to dislike the word. He had not, evidently, attained to wealth as wealth is counted. In a region where the male visitor, though he might arrive in winter garments, promptly sloughed them off for fine white flannels, he had not followed custom. It was true that he was not wearing a winter suit, but what was probably a last summer's one. It was not white—only a grey, light-weight business suit, ready-made and somewhat worn. His straw hat looked new. He was clean-shaven. His face was at once the face of the boy in the thicket, and the face of the workman talking out of bitter experience to other workmen, and a new face, too,—a judging face, ascetic rather than not, with eyes that carried a passion for something vaster than the flesh. "And you?" asked Hagar again.

But he had fallen into a brown study. "Hagar Ashendyne—You can't be—do you mean that you are—Hagar Ashendyne, the writer?"

"Yes, Hagar Ashendyne, the writer." She smiled. "It never occurred to me that you might read what I have written. Have you?"

"Yes, I have read what you have written—read it and cared for it greatly.... Well, all life's a strange encounter!"

"And that's true enough. And now will you tell me about yourself?"

His eyes smiled back at her. "Let me see—what is there to tell? That night in New York.... Well, after that night ... I was fortunate in the work I got, and I rose from grade to grade. I studied hard, every moment I could get. I read and read and read. I became secretary to a certain Socialist organization. I have been for some years a Socialist organizer, lecturer, and occasional writer. In the summer I am to take the editorship of a Socialist paper. Behold the short and simple annals of the poor!"

"How long are you going to be in Nassau?"

"A whole month. These last two years have been years of exacting, constant work, and there's a prospect of the same continuing. I thought I'd got my second wind—and then I came down suddenly. The doctor said that if I wanted to do the paper justice—and I do—I'd have to give it an editor who could sleep. So he and Rose packed me off."

"Rose?"

"My wife—Rose Darragh."

He spoke as though she would know the name. Indeed, it seemed to have for her some association; but it wavered like a dream; she could not fix it. She seemed to feel how long she had been away from America—out of touch—not knowing things, events, trendings. "Nine years," she said again, uncertainly; "so much happens in nine years."

"Yes," he said. "Personal life changes rapidly to-day—with everything more flexible, with horizons growing wider—and the age follows and changes and changes—changes and mounts. We are in for a great century. I'm glad to be alive!"

"Yes, I am, too." Presently she looked at her watch. It was luncheon-time. Would he not take it with her father and herself? No; he would not do that to-day; but leaving the great tree and the garden they walked together to the house. At the gate in the wall she said, "Come to see me here to-morrow morning, if you will. I should like you to come and go as you please."

"Thank you," he said, then, with emphasis, "friend.... That is what, when I was nineteen and afterwards, I called you in my mind."

"It's a good word—'friend.' Let us use it still."

"With all the will in the world. You are wonderful to me—Hagar Ashendyne."

"I am glad to have found you again, Denny Gayde."

That night, suddenly, before she slept, she placed the name Rose Darragh.... A feminist—A Socialist agitator and leader—a writer of vigorous prose—sociology—economics.... She seemed to see her picture in some magazine of current life—a face rich, alert, and daring, rising on a strong throat from a blouse like a peasant's.