The sun had passed the meridian next day when Valiant awoke, from a sleep as deep as Abou ben Adhem’s, yet one crowded with flying tiptoe dreams. Inchoate and of such flimsy material that the first whiff of reality dissipated them like smoke, these nevertheless left behind them a fragrance, a sensation of golden sweetness and delight. The one great fact of Shirley’s love had lain at the core of all these honied images, and his mind was full of it as his eyes opened, wide all at once, to the new day.

He looked at his watch and rolled from the bed with a laugh. “Past twelve!” he exclaimed. “Good heavens! What about all the work I had laid out for to-day?”

He went down the stair in his bath-robe. The walls were still wreath-hung, but the rooms had been despoiled of their roses: only a dozen vases of blooms still unwithered remained of the greater glory; and in the yellow parlor—a great heap of shriveled petals, broken ivy and dewy-blue cedar berries, sprinkled with wisps of feathers and sequinned beads—lay the shattered remainders of last night’s gaiety.

Presently he was splashing in the lake, shooting under his curved hand unerring jets of water at Chum, who danced about the rim barking, now venturing to wet a valorous paw, now scrambling up the bank to escape the watery javelins.

It was another perfect day, though far on the mountainous horizon a blue-black density promised otherwise for the morrow. The sun lay golden-soft over the huddled hills. Birds darted hither and thither, self-important bumble-bees boomed from vine to vine and the shady lake-corners flashed with dragon-flies. The stately white swans turned their arching necks interrogatively toward the splashing, and the brown ducks, Peezletree and Pilgarlic, quacked and gobbled softly to each other among the lily-pads.

Valiant came up the terraces with his blood bounding to a new rapture. Crossing the garden, he ran quickly to the little close which held the sun-dial and pulled a single great passion-flower. He stood a moment holding it to his face, his nostrils catching its faint elusive perfume. Only last night, under the moon, he had stood there with Shirley in his arms. A gush of the unbelievable sweetness of that moment poured over him. His face softened.

Standing with his sandaled feet deep in the white blossoms, the sun on his damp hair and the loose robe clinging to his moist limbs, he gave himself to a sudden day-dream. A wonderful waking dream of joy overflooding years of ambitionless ease; of the Damory Court that should be in days to come.

Summer would pass to autumn, with maple-foliage falling in golden rain, and fawn-brown fields scattered with life-everlasting, with the wine-red beauty of October, its purple pageant of crimsoning woods, its opal haze of Indian summer, and scent of burning leaves. Frost would lay its spectral stain over the old house like star-dew, and the scent of cider would linger under the apple-trees. In his mind’s eye he could see Uncle Jefferson bent with the weight of hickory-logs for the eager chimney-piece, deep as the casement of a fortress. Snow-sandaled winter would lay its samite on the dark blue ramparts of the mountains, and droop the naked boughs of the mock-orange bushes, dishevel the evergreens like rough-and-tumble schoolboys, and cover the frosted ruts of the Red Road. But in Damory Court would be cheerful warmth and friendly noises, with a loved woman standing before the crackling fireplace whose mottoed “I clinge” was for him written in her fringed and gentian eyes. So he stood dreaming—a dream in the open sunlight, of a future that should never end, of work and plan, of comradeship and understanding, of cheer and tenderness and clasping hands and clinging lips—of a woman’s arms held out in that same adorable gesture of the tourney field, to little children’s uncertain footsteps across that polished floor.

When he came from the little close there was a new mystery in the sunshine, a fresh and joyous meaning in the intense blue overarching of the imponderable sky. Every bird-note held its own love-secret. A wood-thrush sang it from a silver birch beside the summer-house, and a bob-white whistled it in the little valley beyond. Even the long trip-hammer of a far-away woodpecker beat a radiant tattoo.

He paused to greet the flaming peacock that sent out a curdling screech, in which the tentative potterack! potterack! of a guinea-fowl tangled itself softly. “Go on,” he invited. “Explode all you want to, old Fire-Cracker. Hang your purple-and-gold pessimism! You only make the birds sound sweeter. Perhaps that’s what you’re for—who knows?”

He tried to work, but work was not for that marvelous afternoon. He wandered about the gardens, planning this or that addition: a little longer sweep to the pansy-bed—a clump of bull-rushes at the farther end of the lake. He peered into the stable: a saddle horse stood there now, but there should be more steeds stamping in those stalls one day, good horse-flesh bought with sound walnut timber from the hillside. How he and Shirley would go galloping over those gleaming roads, in that roseate future when she belonged to him!

Uncle Jefferson, from the door of the kitchens, watched him swinging about in the sunshine, whistling the Indian Serenade.

“Young mars’ feel ’way up in de clouds dis day,” he said to Aunt Daphne. “He wake up ez glad ez ef he done ’fessed ’ligion las’ night. Well, all de folkses cert’n’y ’joyed deyselves. Ol’ Mistah Fargo done eat ’bout forty uh dem jumbles. Ah heah him talkin’ ter Mars’ John. ‘Reck’n yo’ mus’ hab er crackahjack cook down heah,’ he say. Hyuh, hyuh!”

“G’way wid yo’ blackgyardin’!” sniffed Aunt Daphne, delighted. “Don’ need ter come eroun’ honey-caffuddlin’ me!”

“Dat’s whut he say,” insisted Uncle Jefferson; “he did fo’ er fac’!”

She drew her hands from the suds and looked at him anxiously. “Jeffe’son, yo’ reck’n Mars’ John gwineter fetch dat Yankee ’ooman heah ter Dam’ry Co’ot, ter be ouah mistis?”

“Humph!” scoffed her spouse. “Dat high-falutin’ gal whut done swaller de ramrod? No suh-ree-bob-tail! De oldah yo’ gits, de mo’ foolishah yo’ citations is! Don’ yo’ tek no mo’ trouble on yo’ back den yo’ kin keek off’n yo’ heels! She ain’ gwineter run dis place, er ol’ Devil-John tuhn ovah in he grave!”

Sunset found Valiant sitting in the music-room before the old square piano. In the shadowy chamber the keys of mother-of-pearl gleamed with dull colors under his fingers. He struck at first only broken chords, that became finally the haunting barcarole of Tales of Hoffmann. It was the air that had drifted across the garden when he had stood with Shirley by the sun-dial, in the moment of their first kiss. Over and over he played it, improvising dreamy variations, till the tender melody seemed the dear ghost of that embrace. At length he went into the library and in the crimsoning light sat down at the desk, and began to write:

“Dear Bluebird of mine:

“I can’t wait any longer to talk to you. Less than a day has passed since we were together, but it might have been eons, if one measured time by heart-beats. What have you been doing and thinking, I wonder? I have spent those eons in the garden, just wandering about, dreaming over those wonderful, wonderful moments by the sun-dial. Ah, dear little wild heart born of the flowers, with the soul of a bird (yet you are woman, too!) that old disk is marking happy hours now for me!

“How have I deserved this thing that has come to me?—sad bungler that I have been! Sometimes it seems too glad and sweet, and I am suddenly desperately afraid I shall wake to find myself facing another dull morning in that old, useless, empty life of mine. I am very humble, dear, before your love.

“Shall I tell you when it began with me? Not last night—nor the day we planted the ramblers. (Do you know, when your little muddy boot went trampling down the earth about their roots, I wanted to stoop down and kiss it? So dear everything about you was!) Not that evening at Rosewood, with the arbor fragrance about us. (I think I shall always picture you with roses all about you. Red roses the color of your lips!) No, it was not then that it began—nor that dreadful hour when you fought with me to save my life—nor the morning you sat your horse in the box-rows in that yew-green habit that made your hair look like molten copper. No, it began the first afternoon, when I sat in my motor with your rose in my hand! It has never left me since, by day or by night. And yet there are people in this age of airships and honking highways and typewriters who think love-at-first-sight is as out-of-date as our little grandmothers’ hoops rusting in the garret. Ah, sweetheart, I, for one, know better!

“Suppose I had not come to Virginia—and known you! My heart jumps when I think of it. It makes one believe in fate. Here at the Court I found an old leaf-calendar—it sits at my elbow now, just as I came on it. The date it shows is May 14th, and its motto is: Every man carries his fate upon a riband about his neck. I like that.

“That first Sunday at St. Andrew’s, I thought of a day—may it be soon!—when you and I might stand before that altar, with your people (my people, too, now) around us, and I shall hear you say: ‘I, Shirley, take thee, John—’ And to think it is really to come true! Do you remember the text the minister preached from? It was ‘But all men perceive that they have riches, and that their faces shine as the faces of angels.’ I think I shall go about henceforth with my face shining, so that all men will see that I have riches—your love for me, dear.

“I am so happy I can hardly see the words—or perhaps it is that the sun has set. I am sending this over by Uncle Jefferson. Send me back just a word by him, sweetheart, to say I may come to you to-night. And add the three short words I am so thirsty to hear over and over—one verb between two pronouns—so that I can kiss them all at once!”