CHAPTER XIV
THE GUARDS ARE CHANGED
A NEW life had opened for Varge. There was the vast, limitless blue overhead; the warm sunshine, tanning his face to a ruddy brown and chasing the pallor of prison and of illness from his cheeks; the balmy air of springtime to drink in full, deep draughts, like precious nectar spiced with the smell of fresh, new earth and growing things—and it was her garden.
He remembered the first morning, a week ago now, when Doctor Kreelmar had discharged him from the infirmary and they had sent him to the warden's house—and he had found her on the lawn. She had seemed like a being from another world, a gift of God of sweetness, purity and innocence, one to worship as above and apart; and his soul, the better, the finer things that were in him had gone out to her in homage and allegiance, as one might reverently lay upon an altar a glad, spontaneous tribute to one of loftier mould, who, diffusing about her intangibly an air of fine contagion, bred the gentler, dearer things of life.
As he had stood before her then, the black-and-grey striped felon suit he wore had seemed a desecration of her presence; and that she should think him what he appeared to be had sent the hot blood flushing to his face. And then with what gentle tact she had put him at his ease!—talking to him of her garden, the work there was to do, her plans for some new flower-beds, the trim-
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