"Mother," said the girl, "I think I'll look at his shin again."
"Nonsense!" protested Darrel, struggling to sit up, and being checked by a soft but firm little hand flat against his chest.
"I don't want to have my shin looked at," he repeated helplessly.
"Mother, I am going to change the dressing. Will you help?"
"Then make Guild go out of the room! He's laughing at me now!"
Karen was laughing, too, and now she turned to Guild: "Come," she said, smilingly; "we are not welcome here. Also I do want you to see the rose garden by star-light." And to Mrs. Courland, naïvely: "May we please be excused to see your lovely garden?"
The pretty young matron smiled and nodded, busy with the box of first-aid bandages for which Valentine was now waiting.
So Karen and Guild went out together into the star-light, across the terrace and lawns and down along a dim avenue of beeches.
The night was aromatic with the clean sweet odour of the forest; a few leaves had fallen, merely a tracery of delicate burnt-gold under foot.
Karen turned to the right between tall clipped hedges.
Mossy steps of stone terminated the alley and led down into an old sunken garden with wall and pool and ghostly benches of stone, and its thousands of roses perfuming the still air.
They were all there, the heavenly company, dimly tinted in crimson, pink, and gold--Rose de Provence, Gloire de Dijon, Damask, Turkish, Cloth of Gold--exquisite ghosts of their ardent selves--immobile phantoms, mystic, celestial, under the high lustre of the stars.
Mirror-dark, the round pool's glass reflected a silvery inlay of the constellations; tall trees bordered the wall, solemn, unstirring, as though ranged there for some midnight rite. The thin and throbbing repetition of hidden insects were the only sounds in that still and scented place.
They leaned upon the balustrade of stone and looked down into the garden for a while. She stirred first, turning a little way toward him. And together they descended the steps and walked to the pool's rim.
Once, while they stood there, she moved away from his side and strolled away among the roses, roaming at random, pausing here and there to bend and touch with her face some newly opened bud.
Slender and shadowy she lingered among the unclosing miracles of rose and gold, straying, loitering, wandering on, until again she found herself beside the pool of mirror black--and beside her lover.