The Vision of Desire

"Beyond the hill there's a garden, Fashioned of sweetest flowers, Calling to you with its voice of gold, Telling you all that your heart may hold. Beyond the hill there's a garden fair-- My garden of happy hours.

"Dream-flowers grow in that garden, Blossom of sun and showers, There, withered hopes may bloom anew, Dreams long forgotten shall come true. Beyond the hill there's a garden fair-- My garden of happy hours!"

MARGARET PEDLER.

NOTE:--Musical setting by Margaret Pedler. Published by Edward Schuberth & Co., 11 East 22nd Street, New York.

THE VISION OF DESIRE

PROLOGUE

_"... It's no use pretending any longer. I can't marry you, I don't suppose you will ever understand or forgive me. No man would. But try to believe that I haven't come to this decision hurriedly or without thinking. I seem to have done nothing but think, lately!_

_"I want you to forget last night, Eliot. We were both a little mad, and there was moonlight and the scent of roses.... But it's good-bye, all the same--it must be. Please don't try to see, me again. It could do no good and would only hurt us both."_

Very deliberately the man read this letter through a second time. At first reading it had seemed to him incredible, a hallucination. It gave him a queer feeling of unreality--it was all so impossible, so wildly improbable!

"I want you to forget last night." Last night! When the woman who had written those cool words of dismissal had lain in his arms, exquisite in her passionate surrender. His mouth set itself grimly. Whatever came next, whatever the future might hold, he knew that neither of them would be able to forget. There are some things that cannot be forgotten, and the moment when a man and woman first give their love utterance in words is one of them.

He crushed the note slowly in his hand till it was nothing more than a crumpled ball of paper, and raised his arm to fling it away. Then suddenly his lips relaxed in a smile and a light of relief sprang into his eyes. It was all nonsense, of course--just some foolish, woman's whim or fancy, some ridiculous idea she had got into her head which five minutes' talk between them would dispel. He had been a fool to take it seriously. He unclenched his hand and smoothed out the crumpled sheet of paper. Tearing it into very small pieces, he tossed them into the garden below the veranda where he was sitting and watched them circle to the ground like particles of fine white snow.

As they settled his face cleared. The tension induced by the perusal of the letter had momentarily aged it, affording a fleeting glimpse of the man as he might be ten years hence if things should chance to go awry with him--hard and relentless, with more than a suggestion of cruelty. But now, the strain lessened, his face revealed that charm of boyishness which is always curiously attractive in a man who has actually left his boyhood behind him. The mouth above the strong, clean-cut chin was singularly sweet, the grey eyes, alight and ardent, meeting the world with a friendly gaiety of expression that seemed to expect and ask for friendliness in return.

As the last scrap of paper drifted to earth he stretched out his arms, drawing a great breath of relief. His tea, brought to him at the same time as the letter he had just destroyed, still stood untasted on a rustic table beside him. He poured some out and drank it thirstily; his mouth felt dry. Then, setting down the cup, he descended from the veranda and made his way quickly through the hotel garden to the dusty white road beyond its gates.