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 apple-trees left standing from the orchard which had covered all the land about Brook Cottage in the days when Savina Pentland was still alive; and for a long time (she never knew how long) she remained there lost in one of those strange lapses of consciousness when one is neither awake nor asleep but in the vague borderland where there is no thought, no care, no troubles. And then slowly she became aware of some one standing there quite near her, beneath the ancient, gnarled tree. As if the presence were materialized somehow out of a dream, she noticed first the faint, insinuating masculine odor of cigar-smoke blending itself with the scent of the growing flowers in Sabine's garden, and then turning she saw a black figure which she recognized at once as that of O'Hara. There was no surprise in the sight of him; it seemed in a queer way as if she had been expecting him.

As she turned, he moved toward her and spoke. "Our garden has flourished, hasn't it?" he asked. "You'd never think it was only a year old."

"Yes," she said. "It has flourished marvelously." And then, after a little pause, "How long have you been standing there?"

"Only a moment. I saw you come out of the house." They listened for a time to the distant melancholy pounding of the surf, and presently he said softly, with a kind of awe in his voice: "It is a marvelous night . . . a night full of splendor."

She made an effort to answer him, but somehow she could think of nothing to say. The remark, uttered so quietly, astonished her, because she had never thought of O'Hara as one who would be sensitive to the beauty of a night. It was too dark to distinguish his face, but she kept seeing him as she remembered him, seeing him, too, as the others thought of him—rough and vigorous but a little common, with the