202 THE CHILD IN THE GARDEN 

 THE GARDEN OF SLEEP 



(From " The Golden Age ") 



THE passage was achieved, and I stood inside, safe 

 but breathless at the sight. Gone was the brambled 

 waste, gone the flickering terrace of shaven sward, 

 stone-edged, urn-cornered, steeped delicately down 

 to where the stream, now tamed and educated, 

 passed from one to another marble basin, in which 

 on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish poised 

 among the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay 

 slumbrous in the brooding noonday sun : the drows- 

 ing peacock squatted humped on the lawn, no fish 

 leaped in the pools, no bird declared himself from 

 the trim secluding hedges. Self-confessed it was 

 here, then, at last, the Garden of Sleep ! 



Two things, in those old days, I held in especial 

 distrust : gamekeepers and gardeners. Seeing, how- 

 ever, no baleful apparitions of either quality, I 

 pursued my way between rich flower-beds, in search 

 of the necessary Princess. Conditions declared her 

 presence patently as trumpets ; without this centre 

 such surroundings could not exist. A pavilion, 

 gold-topped, wreathed with lush jessamine, beckoned 

 with a special significance over close-set shrubs. 

 There, if anywhere, She would be enshrined. In- 

 stinct, and some knowledge of the habits of Prin- 

 cesses, triumphed ; for (indeed) there She was ! 

 In no tranced repose, however, but laughingly 

 struggling to disengage her hand from the grasp of 

 a grown-up man who occupied the marble bench 



