through the grove, and up the hill where, almost a year ago, they had watched the flying geese.
They sat down at the foot of the great rock, and once more looked off together over the valley. Hildegarde wore a pansy-colored frock of a thin, fluttering material. As the darkness descended, she seemed a part of the purple night. The jewel on her finger matched the sparkle of the stars.
Crispin said out of the dark, "How often I have dreamed of you here like this!"
He told her then of the trysts he had kept on the hill, and of how her mother had seemed to come. "She was very real to me. Perhaps, as she used to say, 'Love never dies'."
"She was wonderful," Hildegarde told him. "Honor and courage were more to her than food and drink. I am not like that. Oh, Crispin, I could never have come back."
"How can you say that? When you haven't been tested?"
"I am like the Carews. They want beauty around them. They must have it. They can't live without it."
There was a new and stubborn note in his voice as he said, "Just what do you mean by beauty, Hildegarde?"
"Oh, having lovely things around you—nothing ugly, or sordid."
"Was it a lovely thing for your father to break your mother's heart?"
"Crispin!"
"Oh, there's beauty in moral and spiritual values,
